Cold Water
by nikki.ntm
Summary: Isa was kept in a world of water, safe behind large barriers that maintained the water at bay and the Shadows away. It was an imperfect world created by half a person in hopes to feel complete, and when his void was filled by a light so sweet, his barriers shattered, the water started to trickle in, and though he fought, he would sooner or later have to admit defeat.
1. The Many Deaths of Lucio

**Title:** Cold Water  
**Author: **nikki_ntm  
**Beta reader:** DancingwithDestiny  
**Artist:** TheoriesonTales at LJ  
**Word count:**~58k  
**Chapters:** 13  
**Pairings: **Lea/Isa, Axel/Saïx  
**Genre: **Drama/Angst/Surrealism/Romance/AU-esque inverse  
**Warnings: **Mental illness, surrealism, descriptions of depression-like symptoms, surrealistic description of suicide that doesn't lead to conventional death, sex, violence.

The spell is a slightly altered version of "Gone" from "Snow White and the Huntsman" OST.

Written for Kingdom Hearts Big Bang 2013.

x

* * *

**Cold Water**

* * *

A bunny lived on the moon. It gazed down onto the inhabitants of the spinning rock through space, and every once in a while it climbed down the stars in the sky to roam the world it observed.

The moon didn't like it. The world was a dangerous place, filled to the brim with greedy people. The bunny was an extension of the moon's power, or so the legends said, and so, when the bunny climbed down, the moon would peek through a thin gash in the sky to keep a watchful eye on the careless bunny.

To think that it wouldn't be a greedy man that captured the bunny one fateful night, but a child whose cries could be heard through the thick forest outside a lonely cottage on a field of flowers.

The child had been partially wrapped in a white blanket that had been splattered with crimson. It had been an innocent sight for the careless bunny that night. The moon had barely drawn a gasp when the crying child reached his small wounded hands up to the sky, droplets of blood falling upon the bunny's shiny coat.

A door to a million worlds creaked open at the brink of the child's mind. The bunny turned to look at the moon, its home, fearful of what the unintentional blood pact could mean, but the moon smiled and hummed through the winds; _the child is mine_.

Days and nights, months and years passed before the child was fetched by its likes in the small cottage where he lived on a field of flowers. He didn't fear their intentions, he didn't mind the horror in their eyes, he didn't even fight when he was told to leave his blanket behind.

He simply looked up where the moon peeked through a gash in the sky and smiled.

"_Worry not, child. Bunny will bring your blanket and hide."_

And Bunny did hide. Bunny hid so well that the child couldn't find the blanket or convince the men in white coats that the moon was his mother and that she had sent Bunny to care for him in her stead.

Isa propped his head onto his hands and exhaled onto the window right in front of him with a resigned look on his face.

The story of the moon and the bunny was his. He was the child who had been rescued and raised by Bunny Moon until a grim world pushed through the door that the moon's power had granted him.

Bunny had been gone for years and the moon had left to search for her beloved companion through infinity. Isa was kept by the men in white coats who gave him candy that had turned his world a transparent blue.

He watched his world through the only window in his room, accompanied by the prickly cactus that had found a home on Isa's windowsill where it kept a lookout for the Whale. The shining spheres in pretty colors that lay in a glass container on the other side of the windowsill caught Isa's attention for a brief moment. He didn't know what they were, only that their place was there.

The window was on the third floor. One above the Land of Dragons and two above the Flowered Gates. Isa's room faced a fenced garden where the flowers had long since stopped singing. Isa couldn't blame them. There was no reason to sing if there was no one around to listen.

The flowers, whose heads had been hanging low, suddenly turned upward when a multitude of upset bubbles rose from the ground. Isa inched closer to the window with a gasp of awe at the majestic howl that made the flowers in the garden sway gently.

The bubbles danced through the glass of the window and Isa got out of his chair and followed them around his small home. He climbed up on his bed when the bubbles disappeared into his old wooden closet and hurried back out.

The life of a bubble was unpredictable. The rules of space and time didn't apply to them. They weren't bound to any world, and they made good use of that.

Isa looked after them when they disappeared through the wall, envious of those who were born to this world as bubbles.

The second howl had him hurry back to the windowsill and just as he got back to his spot, the majestic Whale swam past his window, and for a brief moment, Isa got to look the beast in the eye. Its look told a thousand stories and Isa wanted to reach through the window with a small plea on his lips; _take me with you_.

The Whale's tail-fin lifted yet another multitude of bubbles that seemed to have hidden by the bushes, and though Isa was sad that yet another day had gone by, along with his chance to speak with the beautiful creature, he put his feelings aside when the bubbles found their way into his room and sang him a song Bunny used to sing to him on his birthday.

**~o~**

The brain was a world of its own, a strange world, a world of wires and light. The men in white coats had told Isa that his brain was sick, which was why he thought that he had been raised by a bunny. It explained his distorted reality. They claimed that his nurse wasn't a serpent and that bubbles couldn't go through walls. But Isa had traveled through his brain. He had seen his thoughts swoosh from one place to another. It had only been for a second though, because God didn't like it when someone peeked behind the curtains.

The men in white coats weren't fond of Isa's explanation. His reality was still subpar and in need of fixing. They refused to believe that all the candy did was switch the colors of his world, and they refused to believe that that was the only thing upsetting Isa when they changed his daily jelly beans. They didn't know that the Whale only swam past his window on blue days.

Red days were the worst. Isa couldn't bring himself to look out the window when it seemed like everything lay in a sea of blood. He would pull the curtains over his window and take his cactus with him into his old wooden closet where they would both hide until the last of the red faded from their sight.

His habit disrupted his time schedule.

Isa had learned early on that the time schedule was holy to his handlers, but only on red days was he able to see how holy it was.

The men in white coats were impatient men. They didn't wait for Isa to come out on his own accord. They couldn't wait until Isa heard the Whale's howl in the distance to know that the red had been replaced with the blue because in their reality there were no color shifts.

When Isa heard the Serpent crawl down the hallway, followed by a multitude of steps, he would curl up in a corner, holding the pot close to his chest until he could hear the cactus whisper; _I'll stop them._

And every time Isa would believe the cactus. He forgot that once the cactus jumped out and hit a man in a white coat, it would be powerless. It would lay limp on the floor with a pot in a million pieces while the rest of the men in white coats bodily hurled Isa out of the closet.

Isa would kick and scream once the light from outside registered with him. the Whale would groan in pain in the far off distance as the red tainted the blue and Isa would apologize profusely through the lump in his throat, knowing that he had hurt a friend that could so easily leave.

Sometimes Isa wondered if the men in white coats didn't see the red after all, why else would they give him the liquid candy that neutralized the color of his world into a monochrome scheme?

"Sepia..." Isa mumbled as he was taken to a room where the walls turned into cream and candy canes.

A large man in a white coat would walk into the room and seat himself in an armchair across from Isa. He always held a notepad and a perpetual stub of a pencil that he used to write down everything Isa said.

"How are you feeling today?"

Isa mouthed the question after the large man in the white coat and replied in a murmur that the doctor received with a nonchalant _mm-hmm_. Isa did the same with the second, third and fourth question.

This was routine. It was the same thing every other week on the same day at the same time for nearly six years. Their conclusion was still the same, and it would remain the same until the end of time if this day kept repeating itself over and over again.

And so, Isa decided to find out what was wrong with him.

At the end of the road from Isa's house lay an abandoned library where everyone's secrets and faults lay stored. The door was bright red, an equally red X marked on the window of the door to keep outsiders from entering. It was said that one of the dragons from down below had found a home there and roasted anyone who dared to come near. It was a sad fate that Isa's neighbor Lucio had met one night when he came near the dragon from down below.

One night, when the Serpent's replacement forgot to lock the door to Isa's house, Isa sneaked out with his newly potted cactus in a firm grip. Getting into the abandoned library wasn't nearly as tricky as he had heard it would be, but every creak he heard made him freeze in hope that the dragon couldn't detect his movements.

He flipped through the files in hope to see what faults the men in the white coats had found in him. Six years had surely earned him a thick file, he thought, but once he found it he was brought to naught to see how thin it was.

_Incomplete._

"I am?"

_Half a person. Seeks comfort in illusions and imaginary friends._

Isa turned slowly to look at his cactus who was his only friend in his immediate vicinity. Would it still move if it didn't know that Isa was looking at it? The cactus looked back up at him with a questioning tilt of its head.

"Are you an illusion, cactus?" Isa asked in a whisper, afraid that the dragon would hear.

The cactus shook its head.

Isa sighed in relief. Of course it wasn't an illusion, Isa thought. If the cactus was an illusion, it would talk, would it not?

Isa put his file back carefully. The men in white coats didn't know what illusions were, they were blind to millions of worlds that intersected with this one.

It wasn't the claim that he sought comfort that had struck a cord with Isa. He was half a person and the men in white coats could see it as clearly as he felt it. There was a void in his existence, a place that was off limits for his consciousness. Most days he ignored it, but having seen it written in a place outside of his head made him wonder if there was something he needed to find to mend that void.

**~o~**

The moon's power that ran through Isa's veins gave him the ability to sense things from the future. It wasn't a consistent power. It came and went as it pleased, and most times it could be written off as nothing but a gut feeling. He could be right about something, but he could also be very wrong.

Today his gut feeling was right. There was no mistaking the light sensation in his chest that most certainly bubbled from his gut. The chills the foreign feeling caused him made his blueish world fizzy.

At midday, he calmly sat down on the side of his bed and looked at the door patiently.

_Three, two, one._

The door at the end of the long road outside was pushed open, followed by the snaking sound of the Serpent making her way forward. It wasn't candy time nor was it lunch time. This was something else, and Isa could smell it from where he sat and he inhaled deeply, holding in the scent for a second or two.

Autumn.

How long had it been since he felt the scent of a season? Isa hurried up onto his bed with an excited laugh that he hid behind both his hands.

"Isa, stay back or you'll be in trouble!" The Serpent called from behind the door that wobbled until it completely vanished in her hands.

Isa's eyes widened at the sight of the light-container that the Serpent and a man in a white coat pushed forward into the room. A small mass of light was shown into Isa's home, shapeless and flickering. It seemed to be trying to gain a shape, but every attempt ended up in a short-circuit that its two handlers completely ignored.

The light was taken out of its container and put on the bed that had been invisible to Isa up until the moment the light made contact with it.

"Let's do a check up in two hours?" the man in the white coat said to the Serpent who gave him a quick nod for an answer before she snaked her way up to Isa, her divided tongue sticking out every now and then.

"Stay on your side of the room, Isa. Do you understand?"

Isa felt another chill that made bubbles pour in from the outside and he found himself mesmerized by one particular bubble that disappeared into the Serpent's eye before she managed to blink. He would have answered if the same bubble hadn't sneaked out through one of the Serpent's nostrils, but it was all the same, his silence had been enough of an answer. The Serpent and the man in the white coat hurried out of Isa's home, making the door materialize as they left.

The door out at the end of the road outside had barely slammed shut before Isa skipped out of bed and sat down by the weakening light that had sent him vibes of happiness from the future.

"What are you?" Isa asked and tilted his head to his right in hope that the new angle would reveal the light's identity, but he had no such luck.

Instead he inhaled again, the lovely scent of autumn that nearly had him giggle. His heart suddenly skipped a beat and then it beat harder to make up for the one it had missed, and a grid of light lit up in the room, crossing through everything in an electric blue color.

Isa stared in awe at what was revealed to him. The pillars of his reality, the light that created his time and space, an unrightful glimpse behind the curtains that could have angered God himself if it hadn't been Isa's heart that had revealed the structure to him.

"Do you need help? I can help you..." Isa trailed off and looked around quickly, just for a moment to gather his thoughts. The weak light needed to be nurtured to gain a shape. It needed a foundation strong and big enough to grow.

Isa's heart pounded hard again and the room lit up even stronger this time, shaking Isa out of his fragile trail of thoughts.

There was a void inside of him. Isa was half a person, longing to be whole. He wanted to be complete even if it was by illusion and even if it was for a short period of time. What harm could it possibly do to let someone in, if only for a moment?

"None," Isa breathed and smiled.

He reached for a string of light holding his reality together, and with a gentle tug he pulled it from the rest of the grid. It made a sizzling sound and quickly curved around Isa's index finger in an instinctive search for a connection.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you."

The grid bent around the weak light the second the string made contact with it until small and thin strings of light were born in a different color, barely changing the structure of the grid.

Isa looked at the weak light expectantly, hoping that the transformation would be immediate, but the grid only flickered and disappeared. As soon as it had faded, a violent wind blew in through the roof, burying itself underneath the floor panels, and tossing them into the air fervently. It ripped the walls apart and sucked everything in before it spat everything up to the sky. Everything except the window, the windowsill and the cactus.

Isa's home had been replaced by a vast meadow in colors he hadn't seen in years. He stood up slowly, watching the light green grass sway in the gentle breeze. In the horizon, the green met with a vibrant blue where fluffy specks of white moved across it.

The wind had left Isa and the weak light underneath a gigantic oak tree in the middle of the vast meadow.

Isa looked up to see if he could see patches of the sky between the densely growing branches, but the branches reached up through infinity. The leaves lived through each season within seconds. They grew, blossomed and died at the rhythm of Isa's breathing.

The light beside Isa took to flickering again, but this time it seemed like its attempts of gaining a shape were paying off. Every flicker gave the light a resemblance of a person until Isa was faced with a pale-looking boy with sad eyes.

The boy sat up with a frightened gasp that revived his hair into orange flames of fire.

"Where am I?"

"I don't know. You must have opened a door when you came to. Don't worry, we'll find our way back."

"I can't be here," the boy said and got up.

"Why not?" Isa asked.

"Because I can't. I...I was looking for someone..."

The boy seemed distressed and anxious, almost close to tears, and Isa knew that he should be paying attention, but there, by the horizon, he saw an old friend leisurely swim the blue skies, and he couldn't help but to smile at seeing the Whale.

It was during the distraction that the boy decided to run.

"Wait!"

Isa hurried after the boy, running through the meadow of high grass with such a beautiful shade of green that he had to remind himself to remember the feeling of the straws against the palms of his hands.

Though he tried to make the best of the situation, he still knew that he had to worry for the boy with the flames for hair. Isa lived in a world of water. If the boy opened the wrong door, his flames would be put out, and Isa was afraid of what that would entail.

The fluffy white specks on the sky had suddenly decided to come together and turn into a thunderous storm cloud, covering the pretty blue of the sky. Isa reached his hands out forward, knowing that the strings of his light still had to be in a dimension where he could touch them even if he couldn't see them. He pulled his spacetime closer and managed to get within reach for the boy's hand.

"We have to hurry out of here before it starts raining," Isa said to the frightened boy who was given no choice but to follow Isa through the meadow until they were overcome by a large shadow.

The Whale moved its fins calmly. When one of its fins came down low enough for Isa to reach it, he grabbed on to it, telling the boy to do the same. They were flung up into the sky. Isa held onto the boy as they flew up, and the Whale's fin-flap downwards created bubbles that Isa pushed into for a safe haven just in time before the storm broke loose.

Giant fire-flakes rained from the dark storm clouds. They slammed down onto the meadow, conspiring with each other to surround the giant oak tree that pulled its roots from the ground to escape the flames engulfing the meadow.

Isa watched the strangely beautiful scene as they drifted away into the sky. The meadow became smaller and smaller until the fire that had it engulfed was the only thing that could be seen from the increasingly darker sky.

The bubble rocked suddenly and Isa slid down from his knees onto his stomach when the water that had been filling the bubble squelched at the movement. Isa quickly sat up at seeing the water, and he shivered as he looked up at the boy who sat with his knees against his chin, sobbing quietly, each tear bringing them closer to a most unfortunate death.

"Why are you crying?" Isa asked, concerned by how quickly the water was filling the bubble.

"I want to go home," the boy said with a hiccup. "I'm lost and I can't find my way home."

"Maybe you haven't looked hard enough?" Isa offered, but it only made the boy cry harder. Isa moved in closer and put a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder reluctantly. "I don't know how to get you home, but I know a spell that'll take your sadness away."

"Really?" the boy rubbed his eyes and looked back at Isa expectantly. "Can you do it on me?"

"Sure, but you'll have to close your eyes first."

Isa reached for a pen in his pocket, a pen that the Serpent had dropped in his home a few days prior. He glanced at it quickly before he pulled the plastic cap from the top to reveal the purple pen nib.

"Ready?" he asked, and the boy nodded. Isa put the pen nib against the boy's left cheek and drew a small, triangular tear on it as he chanted the words of an old spell.

_Dark the oceans Dark the sky_

_Hush the whales and the ocean tide_

_Tell the salt march  
And beat on your drum_

_Gone their moon Gone their sun_

The boy waited for Isa to sit back before his eyes fluttered open. The water in the bubble was gone and the only trace of his sadness were the purple tears on his cheeks, which he inspected eagerly in his reflection.

"What's your name?" the boy asked with a grin once he turned to face Isa.

"I'm Isa, and you?"

"I'm Lea!"

In that moment, everything changed. The name of the boy that had been taken in to live in the void, resonated through every string of light in Isa's reality. The name was absorbed and made part of Isa's foundation, and for the first time in his life, Isa was petrified.

Lea was a visitor who came by leaving. If his mere name had this kind of effect on his grid, Isa feared to think about the day Lea decided that he no longer needed to share timespace to sustain himself.

**~o~**

Cuts to certain parts of the body were lethal. A cut to the jugular usually meant certain death, five to ten minutes for years of life to just come to an end. A cut on a wrist was much more uncertain, it wasn't necessarily lethal, but it left scars, reminders of failure and hurt.

Isa didn't want to know these things, but Lea could on odd occasions obsess about it as if those facts mattered. It left Isa with the unpleasant sensation of feeling his own blood rush through his veins, and he was made aware of the inevitable fact that he was kept together by thin membrane that could easily be cut open.

Isa pulled his covers up and curled against the wall. Ten minutes later, the buzzing sound from the lights outside stopped, and Isa held his breath, listening for the tossing and turning from the bed on the other side of his very small home. The sound came without fail. Lea snuck through the distance between them and lifted Isa's covers to curl up beside him.

Lea wasn't a small boy anymore, neither of them were.

They had grown and become young men who were constantly scolded for acting like children. The scolds soon turned into threats with the pretension that it was to make them better. It had been decided that they weren't good for each other. Isa had made no progress in the years that had passed, and Lea's condition had, according to the Serpent, deteriorated in Isa's company. What that condition was, Isa still didn't know. Lea claimed that there wasn't anything wrong with him, much like Isa did, and it made Isa wonder; could there be something fundamentally wrong with himself after all?

"Isa, are you awake?" Lea asked in a whisper as he inched closer to Isa's back until Isa could feel Lea's breath against his neck.

"Yeah."

"I don't want to leave. You think they'll make me?"

"Yeah..."

"You _are _asleep," Lea said with a soft laugh at Isa's unengaged answers.

"I'm not...I just don't know what to say..."

"Dive with me, Isa." Lea ran his arms around Isa and pulled him closer. Personal space had never been an option with Lea, at least not after Lea got comfortable enough to start claiming space that hadn't been his to begin with.

Isa froze and stared intently at the wall, letting the silence speak for him. He had heard of diving before. Divers were the main characters of the horror stories told in the land below, where the dragons fed the famished ants. Diving was how Isa's neighbor Lucio had died.

"Why do you want to dive? It's dangerous. There'll be Shadows everywhere."

"Don't worry, I'll protect you," Lea said. "There's someone I need to find. We'll just be gone for a second."

"What makes you think you'll find anything there?"

"I dreamt it."

"You dreamt that diving was a good thing?" Isa frowned and hoped that Lea hadn't heard him gulp. "It takes a lot of items to dive, Lea. Some are impossible to find."

"But you'd come with me if I had them?"

"...Sure. If you had them."

Two days later they both found out that a handful of the smallest of the blue candy mints were plenty to reach the edge from which they had to jump to make a dive. They just hadn't counted on how long they had before the Serpent burst into their home and had the men in the white coats drag them away from the edge.

What's worse, in Isa's opinion, was that they hadn't counted on the small blue candy mints being as hurtful as a sharp knife against thin membrane, and that the failure stung just as much.


	2. The String Beyond The Edge

The men in white coats had legions of gnomes counting the candy mints and jelly beans that they had in storage. No inhabitant was ever given more than what the men in white coats had prescribed. The gnomes were generally alert and good at keeping the candy mints and jelly beans protected from greedy hands, but they weren't always successful.

Lea had broken through the security system. He had fooled the gnomes and ignored the rules that the men in white coats had established.

The Serpent had set off the alarm when she had seen them near the edge. Isa and Lea had been brought back and confined in light containers until they woke up. They were in neighboring rooms, guarded by green gnomes that beeped beside their beds. The walls were transparent. The Serpent had said that company was the single most important thing after nearing the edge and waking up from it.

Lea had been standing by the transparent wall, looking into Isa's room intently. He smiled when the Serpent had opened Isa's light container, and through a haze Isa had heard Lea whisper; _there you are._

A month had somehow passed since the moment they got to the edge and at noon, that certain day, Isa finally got out of the light container.

One of the Serpent's minions had come by with lunch; steamed vegetables, steamed potatoes and something gooey that Isa couldn't identify. He looked at his lunch, slightly disappointed. He had been by the edge and lived to tell the tale. Surely that called for a celebratory lunch and not _this._

"I didn't get any pudding," Isa said and reached for a haricot vert to chew on. He had sat down by the transparent wall, his legs crossed, across from Lea who had sat down on his side of the wall.

"I didn't get any salt." Lea had stuffed one potato in his mouth and was reaching for his second one.

"Doesn't seem to be stopping you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lea put his hands on his hips and tried for a disgruntled look, his cheeks round with potato.

"That you're eating like a pig," Isa laughed.

"Takes one to know one."

They both stuck their tongues out at the same time and made mocking sounds. Lea was the first one to put his thumbs against his temples to wave his hands around. Isa quickly did the same, but added a feature by wrinkling his nose and closing his eyes tightly. Isa couldn't hold back a laugh when Lea tried to chew through the potato in his mouth as fast as possible to distort his face further.

"Think you can top this?" Lea asked and used his thumbs to pull the corners of his mouth upward and show gum and his front teeth. He leaned against the transparent wall to flatten his nose against it, but it seemed that he crashed against the wall nose first. There were suddenly cracks on Lea's side of the wall, all of them emerging from where the tip of Lea's nose had hit.

"Lea? Did you get hurt?" Isa placed his hands against the wall and moved in closer to see if Lea was bleeding, but Lea sat back with a quick tilt of his head.

The cracks were still there, pulsating with a weak blue light until Lea moved closer to inspect it from his side. The seemingly shallow lines in the wall turned purple before they slowly shifted red. Lea looked back up at Isa with a strange expression that wasn't at all like the confused look of Isa.

"What is it?" Isa asked.

"I...I'm not sure...can you sit back just a little? I'm gonna try something."

Isa did as he was told and took his tray with him. The closer Lea moved to the wall, the wider the cracks grew. Lea took a breath and held it in before he focused the stream of air to the centre of the cracks. He hurried away from the wall on hands and knees as soon as he had run out of breath, and it was good that he did. The cracks spread like wildfire across the transparent wall and tried to continue onto the roof, but the red was overcome by the blue there, and there was no time for a battle between the two colors. The wall shattered into thousands of small pieces right before their eyes with only a small resonating sound of bendable metal.

Isa would have asked Lea what that was if he hadn't known already. It was the moon's power to shatter barriers, but from where would Lea get the moon's powers? She was gone. Lost in the intangible concept of time in her search for Bunny.

"Aren't you gonna say something?" Lea asked with a lopsided smile.

"Why can you do that?" Isa asked before Lea had finished his question. His eyes were wide with awe, and his heart was overcome with nostalgia at being reminded of how long it had been since he had seen the mother the heavens had granted him.

"It's a secret, okay? You can't tell anyone about this."

"I won't."

"Promise?"

"Yes, I promise! Just tell me already!" Isa hadn't meant to sound exasperated and desperate for answers, but Lea made it difficult to stay calm when he delayed the answer to why he could bend the reality Isa had created for them both. Why was the moon's power rubbing off on Lea? Why could Lea do things that Isa hadn't been taught yet?

Isa tried to smile without seeming bothered when Lea looked at him with hesitation in his eyes. "I mean, who would I tell?"

Lea got up onto his feet and walked across the shards of wall that lay all over the floor to get to Isa's side of the room. He sat down next to Isa with a quick look around and a soft sigh.

"I dived. And we need to dive again, Isa. We have to leap off the edge." Lea smiled. "I met Bunny."

"What!?" Isa gasped and was instantly hushed by Lea.

"Only for a second. He told me that he could show me the way and that he could right your wrongs."

"What?" Isa stared at Lea, dumbfounded and incapable of asking anything else when all he could do was try to process the proximity of Bunny.

"He said that my road is lit with a thread that's red, and that I needed to follow it to find what I've always been searching for." Lea couldn't keep the smile off his face. The news that Bunny had brought had come to him as a godsend, and he had no reason to hide his happiness. He wasn't the one living in fear of what his departure could do to Isa's grid of light.

"And, my wrongdoings? I've done something wrong?"

"He didn't get the chance to say. I was pulled back. That's why we have to go back there, Isa. Bunny is waiting for you, and I have people waiting for me too."

"The ones you've been searching for," Isa said quietly and looked down at his pale hands.

"What do you say? I can have the ingredients by tomorrow night."

Isa nodded slowly and moved in closer to Lea for a hug. The pain from their last attempt was fresh in his mind. Diving was terrifying, but it was a necessary evil. Isa wanted to see Bunny again and ask him about these wrongdoings, but above all, he wanted to keep Lea close enough to pull him back when it seemed that he strayed too far away. The world beyond the edge was one with its own set of rules. It shadowed Isa's control of the reality he had built within this world, and if Lea had access to the moon's power here, Isa didn't want to think of what Lea was capable of doing in a world where he could grow without the support of Isa's light.

**~o~**

Isa woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat that burned with a cold, blue flame. His insides contorted with pain to the point where the burning exploded in the pit of his stomach and made him vomit a myriad of beetles that seemed to cling to his esophagus with their jaws when his body tried to rid itself of them.

He was stuck in a strange place. He could sense Shadows crawling on the walls made out of black, dense smoke around him. Their antennas made a clicking sound that echoed in the small confined space, but it all disappeared when Isa blinked. He saw small flashes of his home. Men in white coats were everywhere, surrounding Lea's bed. A dot of light moved over his eyes and made him shy away, and behind closed eyes, the world of darkness emerged again to the gnawing of the growing number of Shadows.

Isa tried to get up to run, but he slipped in the beetles that popped underneath his weight. The dot of light passed him by from above, but this time blinking didn't help to go back to his home where the men in white coats were yelling for a light container.

The Shadows were scratching in the air around Isa, forcing him backwards and further into the dense smoke until the dot of light couldn't be seen above anymore, and the voices of the men in white coats became an inaudible murmur drowned in the hissing from the Shadows.

"Lea!"

Isa turned away from the Shadows and ran. He couldn't see far ahead. The smoke got thicker and thicker. Isa had to wave it off from his face to breathe and not feel like he was inhaling water. The ground underneath his feet felt solid until there suddenly was no more ground to walk on.

The Shadows stopped by the edge of the world and stared after Isa who had stretched his arms upward in the hope that he'd find something to hold onto, but he had fallen into a black hole and there was nothing else for him to do but to scream as he was overtaken by pure fear.

Isa's body jolted on the stretcher in the humid room. His eyes flew open and he sat up as he gasped for air. Beside the stretcher was a green, beeping gnome; its eyes moving side to side in rhythm with the beeping. It had tried to tie Isa to the stretcher with colorful silly string, but Isa brushed it off with trembling hands and got off the stretcher.

It was cold. He ran his arms around himself and looked down on the spotted gown he was wearing. The floor was wet. Isa moved his toes slightly and saw the spongy floor release water with the pressure. Isa reached his hand to the doorway to not slip in the slowly accumulating water that seemed to come from down the dark hallway.

"Lea?" Isa called out, his voice raw from the screaming earlier. "Lea? Are you there?"

Isa stepped back slightly to hide in the room when he heard splashes from the left side of the long and dark hallway.

"Isa, where are you?"

Lea stopped by every door that stood ajar to see if Isa was there. Isa waited for Lea to be close enough to stick his head out and make his presence known. Lea hurried up to him with a relieved smile as he cupped Isa's face in his hands and looked at him with radiant eyes.

"There you are," Lea said and brushed a stray hair behind Isa's ear. "We made it."

Lea didn't seem to be as affected as Isa was. He was full of life, color and energy. Isa looked him in the eye with wonder just as Lea blinked and created a draft strong enough to pull Isa out of his body for a split second and grant him the view of himself through Lea's eyes.

What a sad sight to behold, Isa thought at seeing his pale complexion and tired expression framed by Lea's warm hands. The only thing giving him color in this dark room was Lea's flames, and the only thing on him worth noticing was his green eyes that reflected Lea's happiness and gave Isa a shimmer of beauty.

"We have to find out where we are. You think there's a map nearby?"

Isa held Lea's hand tightly as he was led out of the room and into the long and dark hallway. There was water coming in from somewhere. It was covering Isa's feet by now, and Isa looked to where Lea had come from when he heard squeaking and rippling water. A door stood against a room full of water. The iron hinges complained and tried their best to keep the door in place while the water spurted out from the sides.

"Bunny!" Lea yelled, an echo carrying his voice into the dark. They passed a plaque on the wall; _Floor Two._ Lea glanced at it and stopped to see if there were any maps nearby. "What floor are we usually on?"

"The one where the water isn't pouring in," Isa replied and turned to look at the struggling door once more.

"Something's wrong," Lea said thoughtfully.

"What is?"

"I don't know."

They both froze when they heard splashing coming their way. If it were Shadows, they had no way of defending themselves. They could run, but they only had one way to go, and Isa didn't want to bring Lea close to the door that seemed just about ready to cave and let all the water in.

The splashing came closer. The figure became distinguishable in the dim light that it brought with it. The first thing Isa noticed were the two big ears, one standing straight up, and the other folded in the middle. He held his breath as Bunny emerged from the darkness and stood up on his back-legs to fix his bright red bowtie.

"Bunny..."

Lea looked at Isa as if he was expecting Isa to run up to Bunny and hug him for all the years they had spent apart, but Isa simply gazed at Bunny with awe, his grip growing tighter on Lea's hand. Bunny bowed and wiggled his nose at both of them with a worried expression in his big brown eyes.

"You're in peril, dear friends," he said and moved in closer. "You're not supposed to be here, especially not you, misplaced one," Bunny turned to Lea. "This has been a great mistake, you must run, after the red thread until the spell breaks."

"He's not misplaced," Isa interrupted before Lea got the chance to say anything.

"Isa, you've been wrong in what you've done. Misplaced one must go, this I know, or you'll both be dragged to the land below."

Bunny reached a paw out to touch Lea on the forehead, but Isa walked in between. Bunny had no say over those in Isa's grid. He could order Isa around, but only with the Moon's support. Bunny knew that the Moon had gone, and the guilt for her disappearance showed in his eyes when he pulled his paw back.

"I see, I see, a bright red lead. You can't see it like him and me."

Bunny's small chant revealed a red light extending down the corridor underneath the accumulating water. A thread. Isa stepped back to see if the thread continued to the door behind them.

He held back a gasp. The thread tied around Lea's ring finger glowed brighter when Isa laid eyes on it.

"I can't see the thread? How am I supposed to find what I'm looking for?"

"You are at the mercy of one whose moral compass easily goes awry. I can only hope that no one will have to die."

"What? What are you talking about? Isa, can you see the thread?" Lea pulled at Isa's arm to have Isa face him, but Isa moved away and simply said no.

The word lingered in the air, swirling and collecting the dust around it until it became black smoke. Shadows tried to climb out of it, but in its swirling, it got caught in the water and tainted it with its color to hide the red thread that Bunny had summoned.

"Jealousy will color the landscapes you walk in. Darkness will devour not only yours but his light as well. The Shadows will find you and tear the flesh from your bones, and it will all be well deserved for meddling with the fate of the misplaced one."

"Why are you talking to him like that? I thought you guys had waited ages to see each other again. I thought you'd be happy that I brought Isa to you!"

Bunny glanced at Isa.

"You thought wrong."

Isa looked away when Bunny slowly became transparent, devoured by the surroundings until there wasn't a trace of him left with them.

The iron hinges on the door struggling against the ruthless water popped from their place on the wall and were flung against the wall on the other side with a shriek. Lea and Isa turned just in time to see the door fold under the gallons of water that flushed forward with immense power.

They ran.

The water hurried after them. A thousand faces peeked forward through the white foam. The figures stretched their arms out after them with a thunderous groan in unison that made the walls tremble. It was all Isa could hear, but he could see Lea's lips move in urgency. Whatever Lea said was drowned in the furious screams of the thousand faces.

_YOU CAN'T KEEP HIM FOREVER!_

Isa's heart was beating fast. He held Lea's hand tightly and hoped against hope that they'd outrun the wrathful water, but the water swept over them. The sheer force of it tackled them to the floor that turned to mud under their touch, and had them tumble away from each other when the currents overpowered their will to hang onto the other.

"Isa, don't let go!"

The mud was turning the water black. Isa tried to orient himself, but the currents tossed him around until he no longer could tell where he had seen Lea last. The lack of air was starting to burn in his lungs and he fought against the reflex of breathing. His chest started to heave. He held his hands against nose and mouth, but got caught in yet another current that had him exhale the last of his air into bubbles.

_Isa!_

_Breathe..._

_...you have to breathe..._

There was dirt in his mouth. Isa could taste the soggy earth long before he realized that he was lying down on his side, coughing and spitting to get it out. He gasped for air as soon as there was enough room to do so, and he blinked to rid himself of the tears that were distorting his vision.

"There you are," Lea said with a gentle voice as he ran his hand up and down Isa's back in a comforting motion.

The mud around Isa's quickly sinking hand squelched when he pulled his hand away and had his legs sink further into the mud instead. He tried to sit comfortably, but he was shivering and still trying to get all of the dirt out of his mouth.

They weren't in the dark hallways anymore. They were in the middle of a vast and muddy field with vents for rainwater. There were a few lonely trees dispersed, naked. The water had exposed their roots where the wind whistled through every now and then, breaking the eerie silence.

"Where are we?" Isa's voice cracked and he coughed again.

"I don't know, but we have to leave. I've seen some Shadows lurking around. You think you can move?"

"Yeah."

Lea held his hand out for Isa and smiled softly at him as Isa got up onto his feet and twined his fingers with Lea's. When worlds collided and turned Isa's reality into a mishmash of chaos and uncertainty, he knew that he could trust Lea to be there and hold his hand through it all. Isa's breathing would even out, and in the tranquility forged by Lea's touch, he could filter out the worlds that were hurting him.

But it burned.

Isa pulled away with a wince and looked at his hand to see if he had a splinter, but his attention was diverted by the luminous red glow from the thread around Lea's ring finger. The water had washed it clean from Isa's lie. It wasn't going to be ignored. It wanted to be a constant reminder that Isa was meddling with a force greater than him.

What the red thread didn't know was that Isa had fought against this power. Fate had tried to steal away what was his before, and though Isa knew that he hadn't fully won over her in the past, he knew that he was strong enough to keep her powers at bay and away from his grid.

**~o~**

They walked miles to find a road that led away from the muddy fields. They walked even longer to reach the gray and dusty Teapot Village. They passed an old oak wheel attached to an equally old and worn wooden cup that squeaked as it turned over an empty creek.

Behind the cup stood more cups, build around a big teapot without a lid. The color of them all was bleak; shades of black, gray and white.

"I don't think we're gonna find anyone here," Lea said as they walked closer to the teapot.

"Aren't you tired?" Isa asked with a yawn. "And we have to find something to eat."

"I don't think this is the place for it, but if you want to look, we'll stay."

They both turned around when they heard the familiar sound of Shadows gnawing at the road that had led them there. Their bright yellow eyes were the only things of color, and one pair of eyes quickly multiplied to ten, twenty, fifty.

Isa dragged Lea after him and ran towards the closest cup. He reached for a black doorknob that crumbled in his grip. The gnawing noise came closer, and just as they were about to try another building, the door flew up with a scream and a laugh.

"Guests!" A stick figure with a large head and a plastered smile on his face fell out of the cup and his voice made the empty village move with a tired sigh that lifted dust up in the air. "Goodness me!" The stick figure laughed. "Pardon our manners, please. It's been so long since anyone came through here – excuse me, just one second."

He ran out on the square, revealing four more long and thin legs as he moved toward the road where the Shadows were eating. "Shoo! Shoo! Leave the road be. I've eaten you before, I can do it again!"

The group of Shadows hissed at him, but he stood his ground and managed to chase the Shadows away. In four steps, the stick figure had gone back to the door and he leaned in close to Isa and Lea to sniff the air around them with a hum, and he laughed again when Lea took a step back by the stick figures proximity.

"Mm-hmm," he said and nodded to himself as he had another whiff. "Most extraordinary. A curse, woven light, oh, a splash of fate. My breakfast in essence." The stick figure stood back and laughed loudly, clapping his hands together.

"Are you blind?" Isa asked carefully from behind Lea.

"Blind? Oh, no. I can see, but my eyes were sewn shut, and so I rely on my other senses to tell me of my surroundings. Are you blind?"

"No, I can see perfectly fine."

"Don't you lie. This town is too colorless already to have more black dust sprinkled."

"No, he can see," Lea interrupted. "And so can I."

"Please, no!" The stick figure laughed and clutched where his stomach supposedly was. His voice disappeared before it turned into a delighted squeak and his shoulders bounced up and down with laughter. He sighed loudly as soon as his amusement faded and turned back to face his guests. "That was wonderful! Please, step this way. The Shadows will be back shortly, I'm afraid."

Isa and Lea were ushered into the grayish cup, not entirely sure what to expect of its insides, but as soon as they stepped through the door, they were met with the wonderful smell of bread, cinnamon and hot chocolate.

"I'm Charles, no other name will do. Take a seat, wherever you please is fine." Charles climbed over the counter with his long legs and simultaneously reached for the stove, the waterboiler, two cups, cocoa and sugar.

Isa and Lea looked at the seats; small gooey lumps of pink stuck in oversized cupcake paper, staring back at them with tired eyes. The tables stood balancing on one leg, almost tilting over when it became too challenging.

"What brings two young men like yourselves to a small village like ours?"

"Bunny got angry at Isa and unlocked the door. We almost drowned." Lea finally settled with one seat that muttered grumpily when he sat down, followed by the one next to it when Lea led Isa to sit next to him.

"I can see why," Charles said, momentarily pausing in the midst of his multitasking. "You should forget the one you're looking for, finding him would destroy our village. We are at the brink of the grid. We'd be the first ones to go."

"You're the only one here," Lea said with a frown.

"Whatever do you mean?" Charles plastered smile clashed with his saddened tone of voice. "This village is full of life. Every piece of furniture, every grain of dust, is living and breathing, counting on the grid to sustain them."

A scream from the basement made them all freeze and look at the zigzagged door. Charles sighed and shook his head, climbing over the counter again to hurry to the door. "You've upset the radiators. I hope you don't mind sleeping in the cold."

"I didn't mean to…" Lea was left with his apology when Charles disappeared into the basement with a comforting hush. Lea turned to Isa with a helpless look on his face. "I didn't mean to offend them."

"I know."

"Isa…do you really not see the red string? Tell me the truth. I've never seen you speak in black dust before."

That wasn't entirely true. Isa had spoken in black dust dozens of times, only Lea didn't see it as such when he did. It had never been about serious things, only small things, small enough that Isa could bend their real shape and color to something more suiting for something that was true.

The red string lay in a pile by Lea's feet and it continued through the door and onwards until it disappeared in the horizon. Isa had been well aware of it on their way here, but he hoped that he could avoid black dust on technicalities. Technically, he didn't see the thread when Lea had his hands on his lap under the table. Isa knew it was there, but it was out of sight.

Isa fixated his eyes on Lea as he responded.

"I really don't see it."

The pink gooey lump Lea was sitting on, sneezed, causing a chain reaction in all the gooey lumps. The tables were frightened and tried their best to keep their balance on one leg. Lea looked around to see if any table needed help, but missed that it was the table furthest away from him that needed help the most. It fell at the feet of a barstool, catching one of its toes underneath it hard enough to make the barstool scream in pain.

"What the hell?" Lea got up from where he sat to look at the barstool, but his attention was caught by the waterboiler that suddenly shrieked to get the cups behind it to stand in order, and then, with a dark and mellow voice, it began to sing a sweet ballroom song in gibberish.

The pink gooey lumps, the tables and the barstool, all settled to the sweet tunes that the waterboiler and the cups offered them. Charles came back through the door, snapping his fingers in rhythm to the gentle song. He walked around the counter and finished the hot chocolate that he had started for Isa and Lea, and by the time the song came to an end, he put the two cups on the table.

"Good news, the radiators are back in business, hopefully they'll stay on during the night, but there are no guarantees."

"Did they really get that offended?"

"No, they're over your inadvertence. We've had trouble keeping warm lately. The radiators haven't been able to absorb heat as well as they used to."

"Why? Is there something wrong with them?" Isa asked while Lea sipped on his hot chocolate.

"That's what I thought, but I fear that the problems run much deeper than malfunctioning radiators. When you came here, you didn't see a red flickering light in the horizon, did you?"

"No, I saw nothing red," Isa replied quickly and decided to reach for his cup.

"I saw it!" Lea said. "It was too far down to be a star, but too high up to be a street lamp."

"The red light is attached to a large tower that's connected to the Heart Station. No one this far out has ever been near it, but we all know that's where all the heat comes from. To get heat, the Guardians toss things, spheres, into the Furnace, but rumor has it that something is very wrong at the Heart Station."

"What kind of wrong?"

"Once a month, the red flickering light would do a check-up, shine brighter to see the very outskirts of the grid. Two months have passed since the last check-up, and the tower is spewing more smoke than ever. Generally, we had at least the sun granting us warmth during the day, but now we can only hope that the Guardians get the Heart Station up and running before we wake up one day, frozen to death."

"How..." Lea began and tilted his head slightly. "How would you wake up if you're dead?"

"Immortality, of course, you silly goose!" Charles folded his multitude of legs underneath himself to sit down. "Say, Lea, would you mind awfully if I asked you to go downstairs and bring the radiators a small gift as an apology? It does get really cold when they shut down."

"I don't mind at all!" Lea hurried to his feet and walked over to the counter where Charles had put a small plate made of tiny cookies, glued together with neon-colored frosting. "I'll be back in a flash!" He called after himself as he walked downstairs, through the zigzagged door.

"No need to rush!" Charles called after him and quickly turned to Isa, pushing his cup away gently to have Isa's full attention. "That red thread is going to be a bit of a bother, wouldn't you agree, Isa? Was that Bunny's doing?"

"How do you know...?"

"Don't act surprised, Isa! We too live in the grid. On a different level, sure, but you know how news travels; fast and faster. You need to alleviate Lea from the burden he has been chosen to bear, Isa. That thread is bad news for everyone involved. Remember last time Fate tried to interfere? It was not pretty. Have you tried to pull it off of him?"

"I don't think I should be talking about this with you." Isa reached for his cup slowly while he eyed Charles, wondering if Charles saw his world through the small springs between every stitch on his eyes.

"What if I told you that..." Charles leaned in closer and spoke in a whisper. "...the Moon is watching?"

"She's lost," Isa said with enough uncertainty in his voice for Charles to continue.

"She's back, Isa. She's just hiding from forces that are out to destroy her, like the red thread."

"What can the red thread do to the Moon? It's just a thread."

"Is it though? Does it not burn you when you come near? Is it not protected by Bunny's spell? The Moon is fragile, Isa. I think something happened a month ago that set this off, something strong enough to pull Bunny and the Moon back into our grid. Whatever it is, we have to stop it."

"Won't it hurt Lea? If I do something to the thread?"

"The thread has been forced upon him, Isa. You ask as if we are conspiring against him, but I assure you, we are not. The thread will cause him more hurt than anything else. What you need to do, is to find the Golden Scissors. X will mark the spot."

"What Golden Sci–"

"I think the radiators were hungry. They ate every last crumb of that cookie plate." Lea said as soon as he stepped through the doorway and sat down by Isa and had a gulp of his hot chocolate, clearly oblivious to the conversation he had interrupted. "Did you say that it was okay for us to lodge here overnight, Charles?"

"Ah, yes, of course. If you walk around the counter and look at the wall, take the fifth door to the left, three doors up to get to the guest room. It's time for my beauty sleep too. Good night, friends. Sleep well." Charles got up onto his feet and climbed up onto the counter where he sat down with a small thump. "Remember, Isa. X marks the spot."


	3. The Only Blue That Matters

At the dawn of time, when God created life on Earth, there had been three kinds of humans; men, women, and the Lucid. The Lucid had been one of God's greatest achievements. They were two in one. Male and female. Yin and Yang. They grew in God's light until they could almost feel the stars in their grasp, but like most of God's perfect creatures, they fell.

The Lucid became arrogant in their perfection. They questioned God and the purpose of His existence when the Lucid could create everything they needed without any help from above. God was angered with their arrogance and warned His creations, but He was ignored.

God clouded the Earth's sky with fury and spoke through the deafening thunder and lightning that turned rock into liquid fire. It had been enough to frighten the Lucid, the men, and the women, but God could not rest knowing that the Lucid could take Earth from Him with their thoughts and ideas. He wasn't ready to kill His creations, He simply wanted to alter them slightly in a way to forever remind them that there was a force that stood above them. A force they needed to kneel before.

Earth was filled with the tortured screams of the Lucid the night God made his alterations. He tore the Lucid in halves, dispersing them around the world and keeping the red threads of blood and flesh between them as a reminder of what they once had been. The halves would spend eternities searching for their other halves to become whole again. That had been their punishment for their arrogance.

Isa knew in his heart that he had once been a Lucid. His origin was the reason for his condition. It was the foundation on which he had built the conclusion that he was incomplete.

It had been a wicked punishment. God must have known that too. The desperation that was born out of the constant void in his essence had led him down the wrong paths many times. Desperation was the soil in which despair grew, and when he couldn't find someone to fit in the void, he would make them fit until their presence infested his existence with faults.

But Lea was different, it was yet another fact that Isa knew in his heart.

Isa brushed through the flickering flames on Lea's head gently and moved in closer. Lea's mouth hung open and every now and then a breath got caught in his throat. The snoring sound that Lea made in his sleep had him moving slightly in protest, but he would always end up in the same position as before with an undignified mumble.

In the world of sleep, Lea could see no dreams. Isa had made sure of it. Dreams offered too many doors into other worlds and Lea could easily get lost in his search for what he couldn't have. Isa also knew that dreams were essential for Lea's health. That was why he had tangled their dreams together.

Lea could only see what Isa channeled.

But it seemed that Fate had managed to slip dreams into Lea's mind when Isa wasn't looking.

The red thread on Lea's other hand would shine brighter whenever Isa looked at it, as if it knew that Isa was planning its demise. Isa had been uncertain about going through with anything of the sort at first, but the threat of being left alone had been enough of an encouragement for him to make the decision.

Lea wanted to walk across the grid to find the other end of the red thread, and while he did, Isa would find the Golden Scissors and rid Lea of the one thing that threatened to tear them apart again.

**~o~**

Isa and Lea hadn't intended on staying long at Charles's shop, the Darjeeling Cup. They had thought that a night would be more than enough to rest and then be on their way, but the weather had other plans for them. It had rained for two whole days, overfilling the teapot in the middle of the village.

They had all waken up one morning to see that the bottom floor of the Darjeeling Cup was soaked with rainwater. The radiators had given up during the night when no one came down to the basement to empty it of water. Charles had then brought his two guests a change of clothes to keep them warm, and Charles had asked them to stay until the weather cleared to at least be able to outrun the Shadows if they showed.

On the fourth day, the sky cleared. The teapot woke the villagers up with a loud squeak to announce that the water in it had boiled and was ready for consumption. Isa and Lea had gone with Charles to get water, expecting to see the other villagers, which they wrongfully assumed would look like Charles. Rows of smaller cups bounced out of their homes and formed a line around the teapot with a soft ringing sound from the bells tied to their ears.

"This might take a while," Charles said with a sigh. "Since you're staying for lunch, you could go to the backyard and pluck the bread off the trees."

It was strange to not have questioned Charles claim of having a backyard when Isa remembered that there had only been a precipice behind the Darjeeling Cup on their day of arrival, but Lea set off without a second thought and Isa automatically followed.

The backyard of the Darjeeling Cup was unlike any backyard Isa and Lea had ever seen. Five loaf trees grew behind tilting and worn wooden fences. They had all bloomed. The loaves had the scent of newly baked bread, and they were surprised to find that the loaves were still warm when they were plucked and put in the baskets that had been left by the backdoor of the Darjeeling Cup.

The grass had grown unruly in the backyard and it stood out against the neatly cut lawn on the other side of the fences that stretched between small hills. Between the hills were five large flour mills. The sails were grand blue butterflies, turning and turning to the soft breeze. Their wings fluttered and the breeze caused a ripple effect on the blue scheme, making it seem as if their wings were a portal showing a pond hidden in the corners of paradise.

"Why is Bunny upset with you?" Lea asked, resting his basket against his hip when he turned to look at Isa.

"It's a long story."

"So long that you completely forgot to tell me about it whenever you mentioned Bunny? I thought you were long lost pals by the way you talked about him."

"We were. Pals, family." Isa reached for a third loaf of bread and tossed it into his basket carelessly. "I stole something from him. I meddled with Fate. I suppose that's what upset him."

"He never told you why?" Lea watched Isa turn away, sighing as if there was something he was going to say, but decided against it instead. "What did you steal?"

"The Moon."

Lea laughed. "You stole the moon? Where'd you put it? In your pocket?"

"I didn't physically steal the Moon from him," Isa said, annoyed. "The Moon never wanted Bunny to roam the Earth because Bunny is an extension of the Moon's power. Humans would harm him if they knew."

"And you harmed him?"

"Yeah..." Isa said thoughtfully. "I stole the Moon. What greater harm could I have caused him?"

"Didn't the moon have a say?"

"She did have a say. She said what she had to say when she sent Bunny to care for me where the humans could get to him."

"Oh..."

Lea put his basket down and walked up to Isa with a look of sympathy in his eyes. He moved in close and brushed Isa's hair aside as he whispered in his ear, _"It wasn't your fault then."_

It was such an intimate habit that Lea had picked up somewhere along the way. There was no one here to hear their conversation, no one to eavesdrop on whatever secret message Lea wanted to give Isa, and still he chose to lean in close enough for his lips to brush against the shell of Isa's ear when he whispered the message that liberated Isa from guilt.

The sensation was sweet and enticing. Isa wanted to lean in close too, he always wanted to, but Lea would always move away before he had the chance to react. It took Lea less than a second to go back to normal, as if he hadn't just crossed the boundaries of intimate space. It was unfair because it took Isa at least five minutes to disregard the fluttering in his chest.

Isa's cactus had warned him about this _tactic_. It was a way of becoming a voice in his head. It was a way for Lea to make Isa associate him with positive things, and for Isa to let Lea into his head where the control room for the grid was. But Isa wondered, if he had been one with Lea in a past life, surely, Lea would try to come close, pulled in by the strings God had left between them and that Fate had altered.

"I've been meaning to tell you something." Lea was smiling. He looked down and scratched the back of his neck with a chuckle before he could manage to look back at Isa, who was certain that he had uttered a 'what?'. "I've seen them, the people I'm looking for."

"People?"

"Yeah. Look," Lea pointed at the turning butterflies eagerly. "As blue as those butterflies are, so are their eyes. When I close my eyes and fall asleep, I can see them. They're waiting for me. I feel them in my heart. Just, here..." Lea grabbed Isa's hand and put it on his chest, right above his heart with a soft laugh. "I'm important to them, too. I matter, and I know that with them, I'll make a difference."

The red thread brushed against Isa's wrist and he pulled his hand away with a wince. He clenched his hand into a fist and took a deep breath to dispel the pain that damned thread had left behind. He wanted to channel all of his frustrations into the burning. He couldn't ask Lea if he saw his own dreams in his sleep, it was evident that Lea did, and asking would only reveal that Isa had at some point controlled Lea's dreams.

Isa knew he could argue against the meaning Lea had given his dreams. _I'll make a difference_, he said, as if the only way to make a difference was to be with them. Isa could tear that meaning into the ground and bury it six feet under with the red thread that was causing them nothing but trouble. He could, but he wouldn't.

What would stop Lea from drifting away if he did?

"They're only dreams, Lea. Dreams can be misleading."

"They've taken us this far," Lea said with a shrug.

"We're in a village of cups with no idea of where to go next. We don't know how far off the edge we've gone, there are Shadows everywhere and we have no idea how to fight them. I don't mean to be a pessimist, but your dreams haven't taken us very far, Lea. If anything, they've led us astray. I'm glad that you have faith in your dreams. Believe me, I do. All I'm saying is that you should maybe be a little more critical of what you see. Some of it might be helpful, most of it isn't."

"You think you could summon Bunny?" Lea didn't seem to be interested at all in Isa's lectures of what was possible and what wasn't. Lea was certain that he had understood the message of his dreams just fine. The comfort he had found in them solidified his belief that he was on the right track.

"What?"

"Can you summon Bunny? He seemed to be pretty sure about where I needed to go. If we ask him for help, he can get us in the right direction to get this over with."

"I can't just..._summon_ Bunny at will! Don't you think I would've done that already if I could?"

"Not if you two had a falling out," Lea sighed. "I just think it's weird, alright? What happened in the corridor with Bunny was weird, and I'm gonna be honest with you, I think there's something you're hiding from me, and I'm sure it's about the red thread."

"I'm..."

Isa wanted to say that he wasn't, but phrasing it like that would reveal his lie in black dust. His thoughts raced. He tried to come up with a lie that was close enough to the truth. He stuttered for a second or two, trying to seem believable, but the look in Lea's eyes told him that he should be very careful with what he was about to say.

"You know how much this means to me, Isa. I've lived for this. In their company I'll be remembered forever. You can't deny me that."

"I...alright...yes, fine. There's something that I've kept hidden from you, but it's been to protect you." Isa took a deep breath to steel himself. That much was true. "I can see the red thread. It's, it's tied to your ring finger on your right hand. It glows when I look at it. I didn't see until Bunny summoned it."

"Why did you lie about it?"

"Like I said. It was to protect you. I didn't think you'd like what I saw." Isa's heart was beating fast. He tried to think soothing thoughts to settle it down. He didn't want his nervousness to shine through when the beat of his heart started to reveal light strings in his grid. Lea would be able to see them and maybe deduct that Isa wasn't being honest.

"Why? What do you see?" Lea grabbed Isa by his shoulders gently and gulped. "Isa? Please, tell me. What do you see? Has something happened to them? Am I too late?"

"It's tied to me."

"But, the ones Bunny said I was tied to…?" Lea seemed confused by this revelation and took a step back.

"Not all strings are the same. Someone that's bound to help you or accompany you, will be tied to you by their ankle. If someone's meant to be your 'other half', they'll be tied to you by their little finger."

"And you're…?"

Isa held his breath, almost certain that he was about to stir up a huge cloud of black dust when he nodded, but nothing happened. He couldn't be lying if he said what he truly believed. There is no such thing as an absolute truth. The smile on Isa's face was mostly relief, but Lea seemed to have taken it as an apologetic gesture. He pulled Isa in for a tight hug and buried his face into the nape of Isa's neck.

"Idiot," Lea mumbled lovingly. "Why wouldn't I like that?"

Isa didn't answer, afraid that he might not be so lucky if he kept on talking about the matter. Lea thought that the red thread was tied to him now, and with that misconception, Isa could rebuild Lea's world to make himself the center of it, and no chant of Bunny's could change that.

**~o~**

At noon, after Isa finished telling Lea the story of the Lucid, and they sat on a bench outside the Darjeeling Cup, cautiously twining their fingers together, a siren screeched throughout the grid. The sound was muffled by the distance it traveled, but it was alarming enough to the villagers.

The siren was nowhere near the village, but it was clear from where the noise came from. The red light on the smoking tower flickered as the noise faded, as if the siren needed to catch its breath before continuing with the noise. The Heart Station was warning for something, it couldn't say what, it could only tell everyone to panic while the mysterious problem was worked on.

Charles came running from a neighboring cup and hurried up to them with his usual plastered smile on his face. He was breathing hard, and he paced on the spot with his long and thin legs while he drummed his fingers together nervously.

"Another Guardian has died," Charles said in a low whisper. "Another damned Guardian has died."

Small cups ran by, letting out small screams that were muffled by the water they were carrying around. By the time the shrilling sound from the siren faded, for what hopefully was the last time, the streets were empty and the village turned into a light shade of gray to hide the colors that it had been gaining over the few days since Isa's and Lea's arrival.

"That's the third one this month," Charles said regretfully. "There's something going on there that I positively don't like. Not one bit. How many Guardians can there be left? What happens if they all die?"

"You haven't actually seen these Guardians, have you?" Lea was quick to ask. "Maybe it's not what you think it is. If the Guardians dying is a big deal, the others at the Heart Station would come and warn you, wouldn't they?"

"What others are you talking about? Only Guardians are allowed into the Heart Station. They keep fiends away. They repel and burn Shadows and spheres in the Furnace. They maintain the Heart Station to provide us with heat. When a Guardian dies, the Heart Station screams. That's the only way of communicating it to the rest of us."

Charles paced again. "Last time a Guardian died, a storm came through and put the village on the other side of the field under water. It almost took the field too, but you must've seen it. It's still there, but nothing grows. There's only mud, dead trees and Shadows."

"There used be a village closer to the edge?" Isa asked.

"Yes, the village was near Oakfield where the biggest oak tree the grid ever saw grew on a green field where a Whale once swam past. It's part of the edge now, never to be seen again." Charles sighed, seemingly sad despite his smiling face. He suddenly lit up and looked at his two house guests with a small clap of his hands. "Say, how about a little mutual back scratching, dear friends?"

"What?" Lea raised an eyebrow.

Charles took them both by the hands they were holding and led them inside the Darjeeling Cup where he made them wait by the counter. Charles tossed a large cloth over the counter and climbed over to rummage through the cupboards and fill the cloth with essentials.

"Isa might be on the other side of the edge, but if anyone can get close to the Heart Station, it will be him. You can both go there and see what's wrong. I suspect Bunny might have a paw involved in this mess, but hush hush, you didn't hear it from me."

"Charles, we're busy looking for some very important people. They have to be somewhere along the red thread. We can't afford any detours," Lea cut in while he watched Charles climb on the walls.

"The red thread, you say?" Charles jumped back onto the floor and looked at Lea and then at Isa. Whether he was surprised that Isa had told Lea the truth or not, was hard to tell, but the sudden crack of Charles's knuckles gave Isa a clue. "How delightful."

"I think what Lea means to say is that we're really sorry we can't help," Isa said when Charles tilted his head to have the light illuminate his face in a wicked manner.

"Well, dear friends, I'm sorry to inform you that whether the red thread goes by the Heart Station or not, you'll have to pass it by unless you want to be stuck in this realm forever. See, the people Lea, here, is searching for, cannot be found in this realm. They are not part of this grid, so to speak, and if, by some unknown reason, the Heart Station were to collapse, you two, dear friends, would go down with it. As would all of us."

"How do you know? You couldn't possibly know something like that."

Lea yelped when Charles suddenly moved in close, and through his smile, Lea could hear him grit his teeth.

"I've been here since before the first droplets of blood fell on Bunny's shiny coat. I have seen what becomes of grids whose Heart Stations collapse. It's not a pretty sight. It is hell and nearly impossible to escape. Now," Charles stood up straight and with a small cough he matched his voice to his face. "Getting near the Heart Station won't be easy. The closer you get, the more it will reveal your heart's desire. Desires are tricky. Many start off as something good, but they can quickly be turned into something wicked. Where there's light, there's darkness, but I'm sure you both know."

Charles climbed back onto the counter and reached for the cloth to tie it into a manageable package. He hummed the song the waterboiler had sang for them a few days ago to the tap of his sticks for legs against the polished surface underneath him.

"Friends, I'm afraid our paths go different ways. You must leave before the consequences of a Guardian's death come passing through. You'll continue straight ahead, past the mills and into the Forest of Glue. There you will meet her and she will help you strengthen against the powers of the Heart Station. Be on your way, dear friends, and may you forever be under the protection of the Moon."

"Meet who...?"

Charles didn't answer the question. He couldn't hear it over his humming while he shoved his friends out of the Darjeeling Cup and slammed the door in their faces right after he tossed the manageable package beside them.

**~o~**

Charles had forgot to mention that the only road out of Teacup Village was a long gray treadmill that moved in the direction of the place they wanted to leave. A route that would have taken a half hour to walk, had taken them one hour, and they had yet to pass the windmills.

"Isa, it's your turn to carry the luggage," Lea said, slouched forward.

"Look, a sign!"

"Isa!"

"Beware of the rain," Isa read out loud and walked faster to get closer to the sign. There was a message written in smaller font underneath the main message. "When in doubt, jump."

"What?" Lea called after him.

"Why the rain?"

"Because it's wet?" Lea offered with a laugh.

"Would you say that not knowing is doubt?"

"I'm really not in the mood for this, Isa."

"Let's jump!" Isa stopped walking and was moved backwards by the treadmill. He jumped slightly and was caught in a slipstream. He turned round and round, the wind picking up speed the closer it got to a nearby cloud, which seemed to be Isa's next stop.

"Isa, wait!" Lea grabbed a tighter hold of the luggage and jumped as high as he could. The slipstream he got caught in was not kind. It was more violent and didn't seem to be connected to the rest of the labyrinth of swirling clouds. "I think I'm stuck!"

Isa laughed from where he hung upside-down in his whirl that had brought him closer to Lea from above. As soon as he was close enough, Lea was tossed up into the same slipstream where he too hung upside-down, so dizzy from all the spinning that he had to hold his hand over his mouth.

"That was fun."

"Ugh, I don't feel so good."

"You're not gonna like what's coming ahead then," Isa warned and pointed at the giant whirl of cloud that spiraled down like the most inviting soft-serve ice cream you'd ever seen. The drafts reminded them that it was anything but tasty dessert waiting for them, but a giant and sweet-looking tornado that was their only way down.

"That's not where we're going, is it?" Lea could already feel the lunch at the back of his throat from all the spinning, and though the spiral looked big and menacing, he didn't mind the upper bit as much as the lower part where the twists and turns seemed more violent and recurring.

"Are you ready? Here it comes!"

Lea closed his eyes tightly and grabbed Isa's arm to hold onto as they were sucked into the giant slipstream. What Lea thought would be manageable, and maybe even gentle, was anything but. They spun so fast that by the time they got to the lower part of the spiral, there was no telling where they were. Upside-down, inside-out, it was all the same to Lea.

They were spat out into a glade in what the sign next to them claimed to be the Forest of Glue. The world was still spinning and to make it stop, both Lea and Isa lay still, looking up at the blue sky when their luggage was spat out next to them.

"Congratulations," Isa began slowly when he read the second message on the sign, "you dodged the rain. Hail the bananas."

"I don't like those signs."

"Hey, I worked hard on those!" The voice of a girl echoed in the small glade. She walked up to them with angry steps and stopped by them to give them both a glare. "Only those who read the signs may pass through here."

"I read them indirectly," Lea said in a mumble.

"He did," Isa agreed. "Did you make that spiral?"

"Yeah," the girl said with a proud smile. "Neat, huh?"

"Can we go again?"

"No, we can't!" Lea cut in and forced himself to sit up, but had to hold his head between his hands to not fall back onto the grass. "We're here on business. Charles sent us."

"Charles who? Charles from the Plum Clouds? Apple Mountains? Or...from the Spinach Harbor? Ew." The girl made a face and shuddered.

"No, Charles from the Teacup Village."

"Doesn't ring a bell."

"Charles! With long and really thin legs? And he's always smiling and he's had his eyes sewn shut?"

"Yes," the girl said annoyed. "He doesn't ring a bell."

Lea turned to look at her, clearly upset that he had been led this far only to be told that they had come to the wrong place. "He told us specifically to come here to see you. He wants us to prepare to go into the Heart Station and he told us you could help us."

"You really are a dense one, aren't you?" The girl said, her eyes narrowed at Lea. "I know who Charles from the Teacup Village is. He literally doesn't ring a bell. He's the only one in that town that doesn't ring a bell because he's neither a cup nor a teapot."

Isa's cheeks puffed up with air at the laugh he dismally tried to hold in at seeing the incredulous look on Lea's face. Lea had probably not noticed that each cup had a small bell tied around its ear.

"I'm Charlotte, and yes, I'll help you ready for your visit at the Heart Station. Come with me, I'll show you my lab."

Charlotte clapped her hands once and teleported them from the glade to someplace deep into the forest where she had built a forest-friendly lab. There were small glass containers on the rocks everywhere. Each container held a colorful and luminescent sphere that seemed to react whenever someone came closer.

"These are memories," Charlotte said when she caught Lea eyeing the containers. "When the Guardians started dying, memories escaped from the Heart Station. Mostly bad ones. The ones that end up in the Furnace. I caught them in the last rainfall. I tried to burn them myself, but apparently only the fires at the Heart Station are good enough."

To think that bad memories could come in such vibrant colors; turquoise, purple, yellow, green and pink. Isa glanced at the containers absentmindedly until Charlotte turned to them to speak again.

"Alright, ground rules; you stay away from the X's. Anyone with an X is your enemy, understood?"

"Even the one that marks the spot?" Isa asked.

"_All_ X's," Charlotte repeated sternly. "Everything from crossroads to cookies. If it's an X, then it's a no-go. We don't like them. They lead to bad places. Secondly, when the sky turns gray, it's about to rain. The Guardians that are left at the Heart Station are burning things for everything they are worth and they don't have anyone on watch to know when to stop. When it rains, you take cover. You have to stay away from the water. That's where the Shadows lurk. And thirdly," Charlotte's voice faded into white noise.

Isa looked at Lea to see if he was hearing the same white noise, but Lea was still looking at Charlotte, mentally taking notes of what she was saying but that Isa couldn't hear. A weak beep emerged through the noise and Isa held his ears to block out the sound, and then, Charlotte's voice came through.

_The Moon will mend your wicked heart and save Lea if you set him free._


	4. The Colorless World In Which You Belong

The sloshing sound of water being tossed back and forth was strangely comforting. Isa would have slept through it easily if it hadn't been for the water that seemed to be seeping out of its container and onto the floor where he had fallen asleep.

His head ached. The pain hammered right behind his eyes and he shied away from the light by putting his hands over his face as he sat up. A small pool of water had accumulated around him. Isa looked down onto the floor of glazed tile and wondered where he was if he wasn't in the Forest of Glue.

The sloshing sound caught his attention and he found himself staring into a round window where he could see the insides of the machine that tossed the water around and created bubbles. Isa moved in closer to see if he could lure the bubbles out, but they were squashed against the window, unable to come out.

Isa stood up with a frown. Something was wrong.

He inspected the yellow machine and tried the handle to open the window, but it wouldn't budge. The slot on top of the machine wasn't much help either. He thought that it was a way into the machine, but there were only lumps of white powder.

Isa stood back to give the machine a proper look, but no matter how much he looked, there didn't seem to be a way to get the bubbles out. After a moment of thinking, he figured that maybe he could tilt it. Isa walked further into the room for a better push off, but before he had the chance to do anything, a door opened.

Isa's mouth dropped open slightly at the sight that the door revealed. His heart skipped a beat and he took a step back at the surprise.

Lea was looking back at him with eyes wide, as if this was the last place he had expected to see Isa. He looked different. Too different. His tears were gone. His hair was solid and not flickering flames. The look in his eyes was of suspicion, fear and uncertainty.

Lea tensed up.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Isa stuttered briefly. "I...was hoping you could tell me?"

Lea stayed by the door, holding a big basket full of clothes. He scoffed at Isa and the smile Isa thought was coming was Lea gritting his teeth while he gripped the doorknob tightly in his hand.

"Haven't you done enough damage already? She's broken enough as it is. Let her get well in peace." Lea's voice was low, almost a growl as he glanced to the side of the room where Isa couldn't see anything. Lea glared back at Isa. "I know you don't give a flying fuck about anyone but yourself, and I know you think your power is going to scare me off, but if you show up here again, I'll bash your face in. That's not a threat, that's a promise."

Isa frowned again, uncertain if that had been a joke or if he had truly done something to upset Lea. He tried to smile, but the furious glare Lea shot stopped him.

"I...I was trying to, um, free the bubbles..." Isa gulped and decided to look down on the floor to work up the courage to face Lea again. He pointed at the machine that had probably smashed hundreds of bubbles already. "They're stuck in that machine, and I thought that if I tilted it...they might not have to be stuck anymore...Don't, look at me like that."

"Are you off your meds?" There was misplaced amusement in the incredulous look in Lea's eyes.

Isa knew that look far too well to have anything but spite for it. That's how the men in the white coats looked at him, as if his head was dropping loose screws and short circuiting for everyone to see. Lea joked about many things, but he had never made fun of Isa's supposed condition.

"It doesn't matter," Lea said before Isa thought of a comeback. "You tell Vexen to give you your meds on time and to put you on a leash to keep you far away from me."

"Why would you say something like that?"

This had stopped being funny a long time ago. Lea's words were nothing but hurtful and vicious. All of Lea's attitude against him was Isa's worst fears coming true, and there was only one thing Isa could think of that could make Lea change so much in so little time.

He must have found out about the lies.

Lea opened the door behind him and held it open for Isa with an overly polite gesture toward it. "It's time for you to leave. This better be the last time I see you here. I sure as hell can't be held responsible if there's a second."

"Lea..." Isa began and took a step closer, but was stopped again by Lea's furious glare at him.

"It's Axel. Thanks to you, it's Axel. Leave. Last warning."

Isa stepped through the doorway with heavy steps. A weight settled on his chest, and despite the small voice at the back of his head that told him to just give up already, Isa turned around with an apology on his tongue, but the door was slammed shut in his face.

There was no light slipping into the dark hallway.

Isa could barely see anything at all when he slowly backed away from the door. He watched the wall grow into it until the door became indistinguishable from the dark wallpaper.

The sloshing sound of water kept sounding in Isa's head, and he turned to where he thought it came from.

"Always follow the bubbles," he mumbled softly to himself.

It was cold. Isa shivered and ran his arms around himself, absentmindedly rubbing his thumb against his arm to soothe the hard beating in his chest. The floor was made of wood, and yet, whenever he dug his feet into the floor, it bended like wet sand and released water.

He hoped that the sloshing sound was a leaking machine where the bubbles had managed to get out and not another gateway for screaming faces in masses of water.

The door he stopped by was simple and yet luxurious. Isa only had to brush his fingers against the golden doorknob for the lights in the corridor to light up and reveal a red carpet underneath his feet, elegant walls and the sound of an elevator arriving at his floor.

Isa stepped inside. The door closed behind him gently and there was a soft click in the lock that settled the heavy silence.

He could hear the machine from further in the spacious apartment, but he stood planted by the door when he saw the interior. The furniture was black, with shiny surfaces and empty spaces. The small lounge suit was in dark leather. Not even the dim light from outside could save the room from the gloomy emptiness that must have been mistaken for elegance.

Isa walked further in slowly, glancing at the empty bookshelves. He walked past the kitchen island meant to separate the living room from the kitchen, sliding his fingers across the shiny surface and hoping to catch a small speck of dust. At least the floor wasn't wet.

He stood in a small corridor, facing the door to where the sloshing sound came from, but the room to his right seemed more enticing right now. Walking through doors was tiring, and maybe, if he went to sleep, he'd find his way back to the Forest of Glue and out of this strange nightmare.

"Saïx!" The door outside slammed shut behind that bark. "Saïx! Come here at once! Do you understand what you've done?!"

Isa stood frozen right by the door to the bedroom in hope that the tactic of standing still was as effective on this barking stranger as it was on dragons. The stranger mumbled under his breath, annoyed at being ignored. He hurried toward the small corridor where Isa stood, as if he knew that if Isa was anywhere, he'd be either by the sloshing machine or the bedroom.

"At least have the courtesy to answer me when I'm talking to you!" The man was older than Isa, much older. His hair was long and blond. His cheekbones were high and defined. Isa stared at him, eyes wide at the face of the man distorted with annoyance.

"You promised that you wouldn't go to Axel anymore. It's bad for your recuperation. I told you that, didn't I? Xemnas needs you to be well for work, and you seem to be doing everything in your power to counteract everything that might help you."

"...who, are you?" Isa asked finally when the man's fixated glare became too much.

"Are you serious?" The man didn't seem to be amused. He didn't even seem annoyed anymore. He reached for a penlight in his pocket and pointed it at Isa's eyes. He turned to the door to his side and pushed it open lightly only to barely hold back a swear when he saw the machine from where the sloshing sound came.

"This is exactly what I mean!" the man continued whining as he walked to the machine to turn it off. "Are we seriously doing this again? Why have you put the blankets in the washing machine, Saïx? Didn't we agree that you wouldn't do that anymore? There's no need to wash the blankets. They are clean."

"I'm Isa...sir." Isa gulped when the man turned his attention to him again.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'm...Isa. Sir."

"Axel hit you, didn't he? Did you hit your head? See, this is why you shouldn't go there. That bastard has undone a year's worth of progress. Come here." The man waved for Isa to follow him back to the living room and take a seat on one of the black leather armchairs. "I'm Doctor Vexen," he began and rested his hand on his chest for emphasis. "Xemnas, your superior, assigned you to me when you started having problems. Do you remember what those problems were?"

Isa shook his head slowly.

"Great. We'll just have to start over. Your name is Saïx. You are a board member at Oblivion. This is the third time we've had to start over and there won't be a fourth."

"Why is Lea angry at me?" Isa asked.

"No, not Lea. He's Axel. It doesn't matter why, all you need to know right now is that you can't see him. You aren't allowed to have _any _contact with him. There could be severe repercussions, and you can't afford that right now."

"What did I do?"

"Simply put, you took his life away."

**~o~**

Sleeping didn't seem to solve anything. It only made his headache worse. The silence was deafening, almost as if his hearing caved into itself and made his thoughts sound louder than they should. Isa lay in the large bed with white sheets and stared up at the white ceiling where there wasn't even a crack to entertain himself with.

Doctor Vexen was a liar. Isa sat up slowly and put his face against the palms of his hands as he mumbled "Doctor Vexen is a liar" again and again to have something break the insufferable silence. In all the worlds he had seen and been to, this had been the first one to feel as draining as it was. Isa was sure that he had been here for days, but the days faded into each other in a way that made it difficult to tell how many days had passed. Maybe it had only been an afternoon.

Isa pulled his white covers close to his chest, clenching his fingers around the soft fabric as he sunk into them. They didn't have a scent. They couldn't tell if they had been used longer than a week or if they had just been washed. How long had it been since he last saw Lea? When was the last time he could feel the scent of anything?

Isa got out of bed, carrying the covers with him as he hurried into the bathroom where the washing machine was. He pushed the covers in and closed the small round door. He searched for the detergent frantically. He couldn't remember why the detergent was important. He had never used one of these before, had he? Had the covers smelled of anything before? Did he know that from somewhere?

His hands were trembling by the time he found the fabric softener and poured it into the right slot. His fingers slid down to the right buttons as if he had done this a hundred times before. The round window was locked with a click and the water began to trickle into the machine, breaking the silence that would drive Isa mad if he stayed any longer in it.

As the bubbles formed inside the machine, Isa slid down next to it, waiting for his breathing to even out. He had to close his eyes to not have to see the white tile everywhere in this room. Isa hadn't taken any jelly beans in a long time, and yet, this world was monochrome. Stuck in a color shift that Isa wasn't fond of.

Once he decided to look again, he was sitting by a coffee table by the entrance. His hands were on a phone, one hand on the receiver, and the other seemingly ready to dial a familiar number. The receiver was cold against his ear. The dull ringtone made the palm of his hands sweaty as he waited for someone on the other end to pick up.

"_Hello?"_

"Lea? Lea, where are you? I don't know where I am, and I don't know where to find you. They're telling me I can't see you, and − I want to leave. Please, Lea, where are you?" Isa was barely holding back a sob by biting at his thumb and waiting to hear Lea's voice.

"_Sir, do you want me to contact Doctor Vexen? He left us an emergency number."_

"...no. Don't contact Doctor Vexen..." Isa wiped away his tears angrily. "Do you have Lea − I mean, Axel's number?"

"_I'm sorry, sir, but I've been given strict orders not to let you contact him."_

"How long have I been here?"

"_...as long as I can remember, sir. Look, I'll just−_"

"Has Axel ever come by to visit?" Isa interrupted. He didn't like the name they had given Lea. It felt foreign and not at all fitting.

"_He used to, but sir, that was a long time ago."_

"Did I do anything in particular to have him visit?"

"_Sir, please, you'll get me turned into a Dusk. Let me just call Doctor Vexen for you, and he'll sort everything out."_

Isa hung up. There had to be something in here that had been Lea's. There had to be something that he could hold onto from before his life turned into a hazy dream and was replaced with this wretched emptiness that made him feel numb. Isa hurried to rummage through the drawers and seemingly empty bookshelves.

Who lived like this? Who filled an apartment with furniture and no memories? There was nothing to stand as proof that there had been a life of achievements and failures before becoming a wreck who couldn't even remember how long he'd been here.

By the end of it, Isa stood in a room with empty drawers pulled out on the floor and open cabinet doors that he couldn't bring himself to close. There was nothing in here. Nothing to tell him of who he was or why he was here. Isa clenched his fists and pushed his nails as far into his palms as he could. He was breathing hard. What if he was just as empty as his apartment? How could he know if he was? His skin felt as thick as an armor, as a barrier between himself and the rest of the world, and at that moment he just wanted to tear it off before he was suffocated by the lack of everything.

Isa pulled the door open and stepped through it. As soon as he was through the doorway, he walked out of the building and onto a paved road right by a busy street of dark smudges that passed by rapidly. The buildings around him were a blur with spots of lights for windows. The wind was blowing cold, and Isa had to smile through his desperation at feeling his skin break out in goosebumps.

He ran down the street. He didn't know where he was going or how long he could keep running. He just knew that he never wanted to come back here.

Isa slowed down when droplets of water started to fall from the sky. He held his hand out to see the drops splash against his hand. Maybe if he could find a bubble he could fly back to where he came from. Isa looked around. There were wet smudges of paint everywhere, moving up and down the road to reach unknown locations.

"Excuse me, sir?" Isa said as he approached one smudge of paint, but was ignored. He tried countless times, but no one would stop to hear his question.

Then he saw Bunny.

In the middle of the crowd of smudges stood Bunny. He stared right at Isa and wiggled his nose when Isa stared right back. Isa only had to blink once to suddenly find himself right in front of Bunny. Bunny's fur was shiny, and the droplets of water ran off him with ease once it started raining.

Isa couldn't bring himself to lift his gaze from the ground to face Bunny properly. He cleared his throat nervously and brought an arm around himself.

"What am I doing here?" he asked.

"This is the world in which you belong, Isa," Bunny said easily.

"It's not. I've never been here before. I have no memory of it. My world is back with Lea. We were going to solve the problems at the Heart Station. The Guardians are dying, and I don't have time for your stupid punishment games!" Isa's voice grew louder and the soothing motion of his thumb against his arm turned into a firm grip.

"You were going to interfere with Fate, Isa. The misplaced one has a destiny to fulfill, and you wanted to get in the way."

"You're not rhyming..."

"This is a world of grey, haven't you noticed? It's a world free of art."

"The smudges have colors."

"The other world is still bleeding into this one. But it won't for long. You are a bump in the road for the misplaced one, Isa, and if you don't stay away, he'll be the end of the road for you. Fate won't have it any other way."

"Doesn't Lea have a say? Maybe he doesn't like what Fate has in store for him. Maybe he wants to stay with me. Did you ever think of that? Or are you too busy pitying yourself for being left behind by Mother Moon?" Isa looked up at Bunny. The dull pain from his firm grip on his arm distracted him enough from the guilt to dare to face Bunny.

"There was never a moon to call yours, Isa. You are the world. A lonely world in a vast empty space. You had to create something to illuminate your dark night sky. And there just isn't enough light in you to create stars."

"Take me back to Lea!"

"Will you tell him the truth? Will you tell him that the red string is what he needs to follow to find what he seeks? Will you help him follow it? Can you tell Lea that you've wished to distort the meaning of the red string to have him imprisoned in your grid for nothing but your own gain?"

"I...I don't know." Isa shivered in the rain. "I just need some time, okay? I'll tell Lea the truth, but I just need some time."

"Time for what?"

"Just time! I won't try to cut or alter the string, but you have to back off. And don't call Lea misplaced, because he's not. He's not misplaced and I'm not a bump in the road. Our ways crossed, and if Fate had been as almighty as you think she is, she wouldn't have let that happen."

"She didn't. You took him even when you were told to stay away. She tried to keep an eye on you, but you meddled."

Bunny vanished into thin air. The place where he had been standing was taken by the blur of smudges passing by in the pouring rain. Isa ran his arms tighter around himself and stood waiting for a door to creak open at the brink of his mind, and as the water started to accumulate around his feet, he heard the Whale's majestic howl from above.

He was going home.


	5. Two Pieces Of A Puzzle

The soft light shining through the small spaces between the branches and leaves were what made Isa blink slowly. He must have stood there staring into nothing for a while because he had to blink a couple of times to make out the contours in the blur.

Something was burning.

He was standing underneath a tree with a wide crown. There was a green blanket spread on the grass in front of him, and next to it a bag. Isa heard the fire crackle before he saw it. A bunch of firewood and softwood stood in flames, a tilting tower of white smoke rose toward the sky, but was bent even further with the wind.

"...and I think I've cleared the meadow of every piece of loose wood." Lea walked up to him with his hands on his hips. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Isa with a pondering pout. "You're not listening."

Lea's face was warm. His expressions gentle, but mischievous. The purple tears that Isa had made a habit of drawing on his face had become smudges. Lea knew that Isa had to redraw them every now and then. Isa wasn't a skilled magician, his spells only worked for hours at a time. Isa cupped Lea's face in his hands and slid his thumbs over the formerly triangular tears, studying every slight change in Lea's expression when he didn't answer.

"I think I broke a sweat when I crossed the meadow to find more firewood. We have enough for the night at least."

"There you are," Isa whispered once he could make his voice work. Lea put his hands over Isa's and frowned at how cold Isa was. Isa thought that he'd flinch as soon as the red string touched his hand, but his hands were numb, and the dull burning was a feeling he welcomed.

"Are you okay? You're really cold." Lea held Isa's hands and clasped them together to breathe into them.

"I'm fine."

"You sure? You're not getting sick, are you? There aren't any gnomes around to help us with that if you are." Lea put his cheek against Isa's and quickly ran his arms around him to pull him in for a tight hug. "Isa, you're freezing cold."

"I got stuck in a nightmare."

"When?"

"Just now. You were angry at me, and I wasn't allowed to see you. I couldn't feel anything. There were things everywhere, but at the same time there was nothing." Isa closed his eyes as Lea ran his hands up and down his back to get Isa warm. "Bunny told me that it was the world in which I belonged."

"It was just a nightmare, Isa. Let's get you warm, eat, and go to sleep, alright? We have a long day tomorrow."

"I don't want to go to sleep," Isa mumbled against the nape of Lea's neck.

Lea's shirt of cotton fabric felt soft against Isa's hands. He ran his hand up Lea's arm slowly. He wanted to remember this. He wanted to remember Lea holding him close, if only to overwrite the memory of Lea looking at him with disdain.

The overwhelming emptiness lingered from the past world. It gnawed at the inside of Isa's mind with the threat of taking over and drowning every sensation, even the despair of loss. Maybe it was taking over already. The colorless world could be bleeding into him to fulfill Bunny's prophecy, even though Bunny had promised Isa some time.

When Isa first kissed Lea's neck, it was to reassure himself that he'd taste the slight saltiness of Lea's skin. He hadn't expected Lea to react to what he thought had been a subtle kiss. But he did. Lea cupped Isa's face. His thumb barely brushed against Isa's lips. Lea seemed conflicted, but Isa couldn't bring himself to notice. He only wanted to know what Lea tasted like, and as Lea slid his thumb over Isa's lips again, Isa kissed it lightly to feel the faint taste of the camp fire.

"Isa..." Lea gulped. "What are you doing?"

Was there a way Isa could have Lea stay that didn't involve lying? Fate had her plans for Lea, but if Lea refused out of own free will, what could she possibly do?

Lea moved in closer. He hesitated in Isa's silence. After a second or two of contemplation, Lea placed a soft kiss at the side of Isa's mouth, and he lingered.

Isa didn't have much to offer Lea to make him stay. His only possession was a potted cactus that sat on the windowsill back home − he had the cactus and himself. It just didn't seem enough to convince Lea to not pursue his lifelong dream, and yet there was something about the light butterfly kisses Lea was showering him with that made Isa want to try.

"I want you."

When Lea stared back at Isa, speechless by the ease with which the admittance had come out of Isa's mouth, Isa thought that maybe he should have sounded more embarrassed. He feared that his straightforwardness had ruined the moment, and he was ready to apologize when Lea kissed him again.

"I want you too."

Lea's warm breath against Isa's skin seemed to distort time. In the slow blink of an eye, Isa felt the steady and soft grass through the blanket on which he lay. A part of him wanted to worry about the vast and empty sky above them, but he was overtaken by the sudden cracks in the armor that had made everything seem painfully distant. The cold numbness broke like fragile glass under Lea's wet kisses and roaming hands. By the time Isa could breathe easy, Lea had undressed him and put an arm around his lower back to lift Isa closer.

"I can't tell you how many times I've dreamt about this, Isa."

"Lea..." Isa reached his hands down, his fingers slipping through the flames. He intended to tug Lea away, to stop him from going any further, but Lea's mouth wrapped around him and turned Isa's intentions into a small hitch of breath that got caught in his throat and slowly became a soft moan.

Isa could see his grid light up behind his eyelids, and Lea's name reverberated through each string of it. It was difficult to hear the small voice in the back of his mind, reminding him that Lea couldn't see his own dreams. Lea had only seen the dreams Isa channeled and the ones Fate had wanted him to see. It should have been enough to have Isa stop and tell Lea the whole truth, but his body refused to obey that very small voice.

The light behind his eyelids exploded and blinded Isa with white noise that crackled in his ears and made him tremble.

The world was breathing with him again.

Isa watched the sky through a haze and saw small specks of light appear with every sobbing breath he took. Was that his grid taking over the world beyond the edge? The thought slipped his mind when the insistent fire at the pit of his stomach spread a heavy fever through his limbs and clouded his mind with lustful pleasure.

"Ready?" Lea asked in a husky voice against Isa's chin. Isa nodded and brought Lea in closer for a quick kiss.

Isa had an idea of how many times Lea had seen this play out in his head, and it seemed like all the fantasies had been shattered to pieces and glued together with each other to create this moment. Lea rested Isa's legs on his shoulders as he moved in closer, holding onto his hips when one of Isa's legs slowly slipped down to his elbow. Isa's heart was hammering in his chest, and as Lea pushed in, Isa dug his nails into Lea's arms and held his breath.

"Isa..." Lea was shaking above him. He moaned Isa's name against his chest, his fingers digging into Isa's hips. "Isa, relax...breathe...I − I can't move like this..."

Lea reached between them to stroke Isa gently until he finally relaxed enough for Lea to thrust slowly. Isa ran his arms around Lea's neck to hold him close while they moved together. It was mesmerizing to hear and feel Lea's muffled moans against his neck in the otherwise silent night. Lea's voice was shrouded with lust and need that only Isa could quench. His heart was beating for Isa now. They were two small pieces of a large puzzle that had finally come together, and the soft click had resounded through the universe to let the gods know that the two halves of a whole had come together.

Despite the hidden and twisted truths that had led them here, Isa was certain that everything was as it should be now.

As they laid in the aftermath of what they'd done, Isa looked up at the sky and moved his bangs away, blinking slowly to keep his eyelids from closing altogether. What he saw confirmed what he believed to be right. He couldn't keep himself from smiling triumphantly, and he rolled to his side to face Lea who had already fallen asleep.

"Lea," Isa whispered and kissed him softly.

"...already?" Lea mumbled and pulled Isa closer. "I'm not a machine, Isa."

"There are stars on the night sky, Lea. Millions of them."

Bunny had been wrong. There was enough light in Isa to dress the night sky with galaxies of stars. His flawed world became adequate to the rest when he was whole, and maybe an adequate world was what Isa needed to convince Lea to stay.

**~o~**

Lea sat by the edge of the water and made rings on the surface with the tip of a long stick from the leftover firewood. At some point during the late night, it had rained. The meadows and hills that had been visible from where they had set up camp, were now under crystalline water.

"At least we won't have a problem putting out the fire," Lea said and turned slightly to see Isa make a knot of their belongings. He smiled at the sidelong glance Isa shot at him. "I'm not sure how we're gonna get out of this one. Do we jump and hope the wind takes us to Charlotte?"

Isa sat down next to Lea and watched the rings distort the perfectly calm surface. The giant pond was a mirror, reflecting the blue sky above them. Looking at it long enough made it difficult to distinguish the pond from the sky, at least until Lea started to splash water with the stick.

"What are you doing?" Isa asked and reached for the stick, but missed when Lea pulled his hand back.

"A summoning ritual. The Whale might actually be in the water now, and if he is, he can take us back to Charlotte."

"If anything, you're scaring him off. Have you tried using your magic?"

"And make the water fall in love with me?"

"Lea," Isa began in a serious manner, but ended up smiling. "You're an idiot."

"This is actually quite a good set up. You and me, stuck on an island, not a living thing for miles."

"Lea!" Isa laughed. His ears felt warm, and his gentle heartbeat became palpable when Lea took his hand and led him closer.

The odd sensation from yesterday, the one that had given him the courage to shamelessly admit his need for Lea, had been replaced with an endless flutter in his chest that had him tingling all over, and it burst into occasional goosebumps. Isa shuddered and tried to hold back a giggle as soon as Lea's lips brushed against his. Lea pulled back slightly with a question on the tip of his tongue that Isa, frankly, had no time for.

Isa ran his arms around Lea's neck and brought him in for a kiss. He leaned so far in that Lea fell backwards onto the grass with a tiny yelp and a small wiggle of his feet that ended up splashing some water from the very edge of the waterline. Small pink flowers sprouted from the ground around them with the sound of sparkles, and though they were too far out on the pond for there to be birds, there was chirping coming from the only tree on their island.

Isa laid down on top of Lea, keeping himself on his elbows while they kissed. Being stuck on an island probably had its advantages. As it was now, Isa wouldn't mind staying like this forever.

"Isa..." Lea was slightly out of breath. He brushed a stray hair away with his thumb and placed a soft kiss at the side of Isa's mouth. "What happens when two halves become whole?"

"I don't know...do you feel different?"

Lea smiled. "Yeah, a little. You?"

Isa nodded. "Maybe that's what happens. We feel different. And whole..."

"Did I hurt you last night?"

"No..." Isa couldn't hold back a smile when there was another burst of goosebumps on his skin.

"You're happy, right?"

"Very."

"Me too."

Small white clouds swam across the pond, and the blue of the sky slowly ebbed into twilight pink and yellow as the hours and minutes passed by. Butterflies had been drawn to the flowers on the island, some had found a keen interest in the ripples on the surface when they flew by too close. Both Isa and Lea sat against the trunk of the tree, their fingers twined together as they watched the butterflies seemingly play with their own reflection.

The sky was shifting orange and red when a gondola appeared in the horizon. It moved in their direction, and as it got closer, they could see a green toad, standing on its legs as it rowed with the one oar, singing on top of his lungs with a serene and powerful tenor voice.

"'_O Sole mio sta nfronte a te! 'O Sole, 'o Sole mio, sta nfronte a te, sta nfronte a te!"_

The gondola stopped right by the island and the toad jumped to the front and bowed deeply with one arm stretched out.

"_Signores, _I'm here to escort you to the City of Sand. Please, come on board. I will get you there safely."

Isa hurried up to the gondola to have a closer look at the toad. The toad was dark-green with blackish spots on its back. He stared at it for a second while Lea got their things.

"Hi," Isa said finally.

"_Buona sera_," the toad replied.

"You have a nice singing voice. Can you croak?"

"If I can croak? _No, signore_. I do not croak. I'm not a croaking toad, I'm a singing toad."

Lea walked up to Isa and gave the toad a quick look. "So you can't do that thing when you inflate the bubble on your throat?"

"You have a bubble attached to your throat?" Isa asked, his eyes wide.

"_S__ì_, I have. I need it to store smaller bubbles."

"I want one. Where did you get yours?"

"Isa, you're not getting a bubble stuck to your throat," Lea chuckled.

"Why not?"

"Mr. Toad, show him what it looks like."

The toad straightened his back, cleared his throat and rested a hand on his chest as he blew up the bubble under his chin, and every time he did, he chronically emitted one syllable used in the solfège technique. _Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, si, to!_ The toad didn't stop until he had sung the last syllable in quite a dramatic and extended fashion. He took a bow to Isa's and Lea's awed applause and muttered _grazie_ while he gestured for them to get onto the gondola.

As soon as Isa and Lea had taken a seat next to each other, the toad pushed them from the island with the oar and set out toward the horizon.

"_Quanno fa notte e 'o sole se ne scenne, me vane quasi 'na malincunia; sotta 'a fenesta toia restarria quanno fa notte e 'o sole se ne scenne."_

The invisible torrents in the pond seemed to respond to the toad's song and moved the gondola forward without much help from the oar. Some of the butterflies from the island had decided to follow them. The sparkling sound from the flowers had rubbed off on the butterflies' wings, and as the sun slowly set, the sound became visible sparkles of glitter that lit up their way down the pond.

Isa held Lea's hand tighter as he stared at the water surface, captivated by the multitude of ripples that easily broke the illusion of heaven and earth being one and the same. The door that led to the grim world stood open wide, bleeding like a flesh wound and it tainted Isa's small pond of happiness where he desperately wanted to drown to not have to feel anything else but the euphoria of finally being whole.

The ripples reminded him how easily this could be taken away from him. Even though he held on tightly to Lea's hand, his grip was still fragile and weak. That which bled in from the other world would trickle into the very foundation of the flawless world Isa was trying to build around Lea, and there would come a day when hiding the truth from Lea would be impossible.

Isa looked down at their hands. A cloud of black dust stirred up inside him. It only needed to come to life to dull the fluttering sensation in Isa's chest. Isa wanted to believe that it was just a side-effect caused by the other world, but it was guilt tangled in the disgust he felt for himself at thinking about why Lea was holding his hand and not desperately following the red string out of the grid.

"Lea..."

Lea looked back at Isa with a small smile on his lips. Isa took a deep breath that didn't quite reach all the way to his lungs, but only made his chest clench harder around the cloud of black dust. Where should he start? Should he just tell Lea the truth first and hope that Lea would want to listen to his apologies after?

Time slowed down. The fluttering of the butterfly wings almost stopped completely and they simply levitated over the water where the gondola seemed to have to come to a halt while Isa's thoughts raced.

_I'm a horrible person._

_ I took your friendship, and I perverted it with my own fantasies._

_I tainted your mind, and made you believe that you were incomplete._

_ I'm not a part of you. You belong somewhere else. Far away from me._

"Isa? What is it?"

"I'm..." The words clung to Isa's throat. He was scared of what would happen if he admitted it to himself that he was a horrible person. He had always suspected it, but there was a difference in hearing it in his own thoughts and having someone else know what he thought was a secret. Axel had known. Maybe everyone in the other world knew.

"Isa, you're worrying me. What's wrong?"

"I...love you."

The swirling cloud of dust dissolved in his chest. Each grain had left small, stinging cuts in his ribcage. Breathing was going to hurt for a while, but not nearly as much as the radiant smile on Lea's face. Isa felt a tear fall down his cheek as he tried to catch his breath. He couldn't stop. Isa knew what effect those words would have on Lea, he knew that it would bind Lea closer to him, but Lea didn't know that Isa had no idea what they meant.

"I'm sorry, Lea."

What a fragile thing happiness is, Isa thought. It was like the water surface of a perfectly calm pond. The gentle and fluttering stroke of a butterfly's wings was all it took to cause a ripple effect across it and change everything. Was it the same for everyone, or was the fragility of happiness reserved to those of malice?

As Lea brought Isa into his warm embrace, Isa sought for the red string to fall upon him, for even if fragile happiness was his punishment, it wasn't enough to calm the raging storm of black clouds inside him.

**~o~**

The gondola's gentle rocking had put them all to sleep during the night. The toad had seemed confident that his song had set the currents right. Isa had been exhausted, and when he woke up, he was groggy; his head felt heavy and he mumbled "no" under his breath, afraid that he had woken up in the colorless world.

The squawk of a bird that had dared to approach the gondola startled Isa out of sleep. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and clenched his other hand around the reeds around them.

"Lea, wake up. I think we're here."

The City of Sand was a rather misleading name. Isa had imagined a city in an oasis in the middle of the desert, but they were on a plateau surrounded by dark blue ocean. The waves smashed violently against the rocks on the northern end of the island, right where the city's grand lighthouse stood. The dark rooftops from the buildings in the city behind the sand dunes, peeked through the high reeds.

The gondola suddenly moved forward and Lea sat up straight, grabbing a hold of Isa's wrist as he looked around with narrowed eyes.

"What was that?" he asked as the gondola moved forward again.

"Waves. I think it's the tide. C'mon, let's go before we're washed out to sea."

Isa and Lea managed to just get out of the gondola and onto higher ground when a stronger wave washed up on the shore and took the gondola with it back to the sea. The toad hurried up onto the front where he waved goodbye. By the time the toad was singing again, he was too far away to not have his voice drenched out by the loud waves.

"Let's check out the town." Lea turned around and started walking up the small hill with Isa right behind.

"What are we supposed to do, anyway?"

"What do you mean? Charlotte told us to collect the spheres, remember?"

"...how?"

"You weren't listening?" Lea chuckled. He put his arm around Isa's shoulder only to have him wince and pull away. "What is it?"

"Not with that hand. The red string burns me."

"Oh, right. Sorry." Lea walked around Isa to put his other arm around Isa's shoulders. "Did it burn yesterday, too?"

"No, I...it comes and goes. You were saying?"

"Uh, the spheres. Charlotte told us that when it rains, it's because the Guardians are burning too much at once, and their main fuel is bad memories that they shape into small spheres and toss them into the Furnace. With the amount of fuel they have to burn through, there are some − a lot of − spheres that go right through the fires and lodge up in the clouds and fall whenever it rains. We need to gather them, bring them back to Charlotte and she takes them to the Furnace."

"Isn't the Furnace at the Heart Station?"

"Yeah."

"I thought only we could go there."

"Well, Charlotte said that it wouldn't be good for us to go. For me, mostly. I was going to tell you about this, but...things came up." Lea smiled sheepishly and dug into his pocket for a small parchment, tied with a red ribbon. "Charlotte gave me this. It's a letter from Bunny. He says that there is no way in this grid that would take me further away from my purpose than the way to the Heart Station." Lea paused thoughtfully and looked away from Isa and onto the ground.

"Does it say anything else?" Isa asked.

"It...it says not to tell you."

"Why? Because I can't be trusted?"

"Bunny says that you've tried to alter the red string once, and that you'll likely try to do it again. Is that true?"

Isa's heart skipped a beat, and the black dust that had been swirling in his chest since the night before was stirred up to life again.

"No...I wasn't going to alter the string..."

Lea stopped in front of him. He looked Isa in the eye, sliding one hand across Isa's cheek when Isa tried to look away. The waves splashed against the shore. A large cloud of mist was twisting around the rocks and crawling up over and around the lighthouse Isa could see behind Lea. The silence was a wordless request for truth. Lea could feel that there was something Isa was hiding; the panic that had been born out of leaping off the edge was difficult to hide, especially when it drove Isa to do irrational things.

"How do you expect me to believe you when you've been lying to me all this time? This is everything to me, Isa. _Everything_. And I need your help. Can I count on you or is Bunny right?"

The waves were climbing up the small hill, hiding the reeds underneath it. As soon as the water brushed against Isa's feet, a dull warning signal went off from the lighthouse just as a giant wave splashed against the rocks behind it once more. A barrier lit up around the City of Sand. The light flickered into life for a brief moment as a sign of activation. As the light retracted, it revealed seven massive vault doors, spread around the spherical barrier.

"We have to find a way inside. We'll talk about this later." Isa walked up to the closest door and tried to open it, but it wouldn't budge. By the third door, the water was up to their knees. The mist surrounded them, hiding the ocean they knew was expanding further into land by the second.

"Isa, you hear that?" Lea turned around to look into the mist. There was a gnawing and clicking sound coming from the thick fog that seemed to echo from every direction. "I think they're close."

Lea backed closer to the barrier as the noise grew louder. He only needed to brush his fingers against it for the light in the barrier to react. The blue shifted purple where the crack emerged, right by Lea's hand.

"Lea, you're getting too close." Isa hurried up to Lea, but he wasn't fast enough. "It's gonna break. Lea!"

The chain reaction started as soon as the red tainted the blue. It fractured the structure as it spread like fire across the the spherical barrier. The colors crackled as they merged and turned the barrier into a million pieces all at once. With the shrilling screams coming from the village, the waves crashed into the remaining walls of the barrier that had been built to keep the water out.

The Shadows ran in hordes out of the fog and into the village. They didn't stop to pay neither Isa or Lea any attention where they both stood frozen, watching the destruction before them as the water rose to their knees.

Lea grabbed Isa by the hand as soon as he came out of it and ran towards the lighthouse. The Shadows kept emerging from the fog, the screams died out one by one, and the ocean rose higher with each wave.

It wasn't long before Isa and Lea were stuck on a small island once more.


	6. The Humorless Chuckles

It proved to be disappointingly easy to kill a Shadow. Once it was pinned down, it could only make panicked clicks with its antennas and scratch in the air. Sometimes it would have the ground absorb it elsewhere, but mostly, it put up a light and uninspiring struggle. Isa almost felt remorse when he cut through the front of the black figure. Shadows were meant to be frightening and threatening, but the suffocating anger, pounding in his chest, made the specks of black into nothing but sources of irritation that needed to be eradicated.

Isa couldn't tell how many times he had done this. His hands moved on their own, gripping the weapon that felt like an extension of himself, as if this had already become a habit. When the Shadows disappeared, so would the anger. That was his theory, but the effect was the opposite. Isa only needed to glance at the empty insides of the dead Shadow to feel the need to clutch his chest.

Things that were alive couldn't and shouldn't be empty. A shell couldn't move on its own, there had to be something pushing it forward, something that was hidden behind layers of protective armor, held together by a thin membrane that could so easily be cut open.

There were dark blurs of piles on the streets around Isa. He shuddered as he stood up and pulled his coat tighter around himself. His breath was barely visible in the cool air, but it was cold enough to maintain a thin crust of frost on every surface in the vicinity. The tall buildings in the area were a brownish gray without the white blurry spots for windows that Isa had seen before.

"Saïx, what are you doing?"

Dr. Vexen stared at him from a distance. His face was obscured by the brim of his dark hat. He didn't move from where he stood. No one in their right mind would.

The weapon that had seemed grand and powerful in Isa's mind had turned into a small silver dagger with tints of purple down the handle. He should have thrown it away, but parting with it didn't seem like an option. There were more Shadows out there. The ones he had encountered now had to be fakes. The real Shadows were surely anything but empty.

Isa slipped the dagger into his pocket. He walked past Dr. Vexen with certain steps, although he had no idea of where he was going. Dr. Vexen followed him. The clitter-clatter of their heels against the pavement echoed between the smudgy buildings. It was the only sound Isa could hear until they started to near the main road where the color spots swooshed by in high speed.

A car stood waiting by the end of the road. A man with gray-streaked long black hair stood leaning against the long hood of the car. His face was scarred and he wore a patch over his right eye.

Isa stopped in the middle of the road.

His hand fell to his side slowly and he slipped it into his pocket where he could feel the comforting weight of the dagger that his mind could turn into a much more destructive weapon.

There was something off about the man waiting for them.

"You better hurry, or you'll miss your chance, Chuckles."

Isa walked forward slowly, following Dr. Vexen to the car.

"Saïx, this is Xigbar. He's not usually your driver, but he'll be stepping in for the time being to keep you from doing anything against progress. He answers to Xemnas, not to you."

"Not that it will stop you from trying to boss me around, hey, Chuckles?" Xigbar sneered and held the door open for Dr. Vexen and Isa. He slammed the door shut after them and walked around to the driver's seat.

"Where are we going?" Isa asked.

"Take your hand out of your pocket." Dr. Vexen said instead and leaned back into his seat. He put his hat aside and brushed back his long blond hair with his hand. There was a dull look in his eyes. Isa took his hand out of his pocket reluctantly and gave the spacious car a quick look.

Was Dr. Vexen as empty as the Shadows Isa had killed just now? Did Isa have the same dull look in his eyes? The walls seemed to be closing in on him when he thought about it. Where had he gone? He was here physically. He could see that. He could touch the seat and know that there was something he was clenching his fingers around, but he couldn't distinguish the texture or feel the scent he knew came with leather. Was it because he was empty that all notion of emotions and sensation escaped him?

"Saïx, take your hand out of your pocket." Dr. Vexen said again.

Isa looked down on his hand, certain that he already had taken out of his pocket. It didn't surprise him to see that he hadn't.

"Why should I?"

"We've been through this." Dr. Vexen said with an irritated sigh. "You're falling too fast. We have to balance you out. That's why we're taking you to Axel."

"...really?" Isa breathed. He hadn't noticed the vice grip he had on the dagger in his pocket until he let go and felt his fingers pulsate. He didn't understand what Dr. Vexen was talking about, he rarely did, but he didn't worry about it. They were taking him to Lea.

The blink of an eye became endless in time when he was away from Lea. He had a vague memory of the vast sea of Shadows that had taken over a city out in the middle of nowhere. He remembered the sound of the barrier crashing down, but he couldn't remember Lea's face. Lea became a blurry spot of color when Isa tried to think back on it. It was frightening. How many times could he have passed Lea by on the street if Lea was a color spot amongst so many others?

"Yes, really. Convince him to work for us."

Dr. Vexen's voice was still a soft echo in Isa's ears when he reached for the door to step outside. They had stopped by a park. The tree crowns were drawn in smudge crayon. The wind made it seem as if their movements were cut frames, sloppily put together in a children's movie. Each blade of grass seemed one-dimensional, regardless of the angle it was observed from.

Isa walked down the small road made out of pictures of pebbles further into the park. The small spheres spread on the lawn caught Isa's attention. They glimmered in the dark, illuminating their surroundings with a metallic and soft light. On a bench of paper stood a jar of glass with a label on it:

_Memories_

Isa took it. They were supposed to collect the spheres and toss them in the Furnace. He remembered that much. The spheres weren't as heavy as they seemed. It felt like holding a cotton ball, only it was big enough to cover the palm of his hand, and dense enough to not have its shape altered when Isa squeezed his fingers around it. There were twinkles of light inside the sphere. It bathed in a luminescent cloud that twirled around inside like a current. It reminded Isa of a dark night sky he had seen turn into a cradle full of shining stars. He tossed it into the jar, along with every other sphere he managed to come across, until Axel cleared his throat to make his presence known.

"I'm here," Axel said sternly as Isa turned around to face him.

Axel was in a coat similar to Isa's. Isa's attention was first drawn to Axel's hair, much like the first time. He wanted to see flickering flames move about in the nearly unnoticeable breeze, but this was Axel, Isa reminded himself, not Lea. It became easier to deal with the look in Axel's eyes with that reminder.

Axel scratched the back of his head before he crossed his arms and turned his piercing glare back at Isa. The silence seemed to have stretched for too long. Isa blinked. The light hold he had on the glass jar grew tighter. He had put a strain on his eyes when he had looked for every detail on Axel that made him different from what Isa was used to, and only that small twitch by the side of Axel's mouth made Isa realize that he was staring.

"What do you want?" Axel asked finally.

"I can fix everything, " Isa found himself saying. "I'll make things right."

"What is everything, exactly?"

"I'll turn you back to Lea. You said that it was my fault that you're Axel now. I'll undo that. Just tell me what I did wrong."

"You cut the string." Axel said easily. "You cut it and made Fate lose track of it."

Isa was scared of what Axel might add to it. Fate wouldn't lose track of anything she'd made unless it was lost in the web of lies Isa had shrouded Lea in until he couldn't tell the lies apart from the truth. The knowing look in Axel's eyes made Isa gulp. He wasn't ready to hear that his desperate search for his other half had led Axel down a path of uncertainty and that it had paved the foundation of resentment in Axel that became painfully clear whenever he looked at Isa.

"...but, you found them, didn't you? You found the ones you were meant to be tied to...right?"

"Not yet. I know that they are alive. Bunny has been trying to help me."

"I'll help too. I mean, I know someone who can help." Isa took a deep and shaky breath. "Let's go before they see us."

Isa caught a quick glimpse of the black car waiting for him at the other side of the park as he and Axel crossed the street and got onto a large, gray tramcar. They sat down at the far back where there were two seats available. Axel rubbed his hands together nervously and opted to look out the window instead of trying to make small talk with Isa. Of all the places he could have been, this was probably the last of his choices.

There were other passengers in the tramcar with them. Isa could make out their contours and if he looked at them long enough, he could see their emotionless faces. No one was talking. They could only hear the engine of the tramcar and the occasional whinge from the machinery when there was a bump in the road. Isa looked over at Axel from the corner of his eye briefly. He could only see the back of his head. Whatever Axel saw outside was a whole lot more interesting than what was here.

As soon as they stepped in through the front door to Isa's apartment, Isa put the glass jar down on the coffee table and hurried to the kitchen to get a bowl. He wasn't going to bother with any pleasantries. This wasn't a home after all, and Axel looked like he couldn't get out of there fast enough anyway.

Isa wasn't sure what he was doing, or if his plan would work, but it was worth a shot. Bunny's efforts had proved to be in vain so far, but Isa knew someone whose powers were greater than Bunny's, and her promise about mending the wicked heart beating in Isa's chest had Isa hoping that this would work.

"Sit," Isa told Axel when he walked back into the living room. Isa reached for a sphere, certain that he wouldn't care which sphere he took, but the sudden skip in his chest told him otherwise. The sphere he held in his hand was the one with the starlit sky, and though Isa couldn't make out any specifics about the memory it represented, he couldn't quite bear the thought of parting with it quite yet.

With another sphere in his hand, he turned to Axel and put the bowl on the coffee table between them. "Take this."

"Why?"

"You can shatter barriers. The spheres are held together by barriers." Isa knocked on the surface of it to prove his point. "If you shatter it, the contents will run out and into this bowl, and with the strength in each of these, we'll summon the Moon."

"And then?" Axel asked, clearly doubtful.

"I'll ask her to make the string visible. If there's enough power, she might even mend it, but let's just hope to see the string."

Axel took the sphere in his hand and gave it a quick look before he clenched his fingers around it. The barrier cracked in the blink of an eye, and the liquid inside spilled into the bowl Isa had put between them. Axel repeated the process until there only were two spheres left in the glass jar Isa had found in the park.

"Alright," Isa said, slightly out of breath. He blinked slowly to rid himself of the darkish frame around his sight. "That should be enough. Put your hands on the sides of the bowl. Ready?"

"Yeah." He gave Isa a quick look of uncertainty, but remained quiet as Isa mumbled a chant under his breath. It was a chant Isa hadn't been aware of knowing. It was as if someone else was saying it through him, and given the way he had been feeling lately, maybe that someone else was him.

_Dark the stars and dark the moon_

_Hush the night and the morning loon_

What brings us together will pull us apart

Gone our ties, gone our hearts

The metallic liquid in the bowl lit up with a faint blue light that shifted into red and then into purple, much like everything they both touched did. Smoke rose from the bowl and danced around Axel as if there was a gentle breeze coming in from somewhere.

Isa got himself onto the couch and laid down on his side. He watched Axel through the mist of his own breath, and he shivered at the sudden temperature drop in the room. The sudden and hard double beat in his chest made him wince slightly.

"Can you see it?" Isa asked. "It's tied to your little finger."

Axel looked at his hands. "Shouldn't you be able to see it?"

Isa shook his head. "It's not for me to see."

Axel suddenly lifted his feet and looked down on the floor with his eyes wide. Isa assumed that the red string had been made visible. He exhaled slowly and closed his eyes that were heavy with sleep. He suspected that it could be the spell that had worn him out, but the purling water running from the leaking washing machine in his bathroom had always had a way of lulling him into sleep.

_Always,_ Isa thought with certainty and drifted off to sleep.

**~o~**

The car Xigbar usually drove wasn't as long as the car Isa had seen him in the first time. This car, much like the other one, was black with shaded windows. Isa usually sat in the backseat, staring out the window until they reached Oblivion, where he worked for an obscure goal he always managed to forget by the end of the day. He didn't speak much. He was generally too preoccupied trying to decipher formless, distant and colorful dreams he didn't remember dreaming. The dreams proved to be like the horizon; the closer he thought he came to answers, the further away the answers were.

"Have you heard of the Lucid?" Isa found himself asking Xigbar on a morning like so many others.

"What's that, Chuckles?"

"The Lucid were perfect creations that were torn in half by a jealous God. They were given a cosmic punishment. They were forever doomed to search for their other halves, still tied to each other by the strings of blood and flesh between them."

Xigbar laughed and gave Isa a quick look in the rearview mirror. "That so? It's a bit different from the story I've heard."

Isa tore his fixed gaze away from the window and turned his attention to Xigbar. "What do you mean? That is the story."

"Says who?" Xigbar challenged with a smirk Isa wished he hadn't seen.

"...the, the Cactus did," Isa mumbled in reply and quickly perched his gaze onto his gloved hands.

"The what now?" Xigbar asked, clearly amused. "The Cactus? Is that a nickname you have for somebody? Is it Axel? Because of the spiky hair? Yeah, I get it." Xigbar laughed again. "He's got a thing for morbidity, doesn't he? But tell you what, Chuckles, you've been hoodwinked. That ain't how the story goes. You wanna know the true story?"

Isa struggled to keep himself from nodding eagerly. Fortunately, he had grown accustomed to sitting still to the point that any movement that was too sudden made the muscles in his neck ache. He fiddled with the loose fabric of his glove between his thumb and his index finger and hoped that Xigbar would tell him the story despite his silence.

"For one, it ain't as bloody as people having been ripped apart. It's a lot more subtle. I'd go as far as to say that it's romantic, even. And did you know that only a selected few are tied to each other with red strings?"

"What selected few?"

"Those who matter, Chuckles. Or rather, those who are prone to light." Xigbar paused to let that sink in before he continued. "Not all strings are the same. Someone that's bound to help you or accompany you, will be tied to you by their ankle. If someone's meant to be your 'other half', they'll be tied to you by their little finger."

"Who makes those decisions?" Isa clenched one hand around the other absentmindedly. _Those who matter_. Isa had heard that before. Not in those words, but in that meaning. There was a scale of importance, and he had a feeling that he was at the bottom.

"The Man on the Moon."

"You mean... Bunny?"

"I don't know if the Man on the Moon is a Bunny, Chuckles. I'm just telling the story, and the story says that the Man on the Moon calls the shots. He binds people together and he can cut them loose. The string is invisible to everyone though, just to spice things up a little."

"What if you can see the string?"

"_No one _can see the strings. Those are the rules."

"But what if?"

"Well, only Heartless can see what binds those with hearts to each other," Xigbar said with a thoughtful tone of voice, but the look Isa caught in the rearview mirror clearly told him that he was reaching a conclusion Xigbar had been trying to get at long before this conversation took place.

"I have a heart."

"Do you, Chuckles? How do you know for sure?"

"I can feel it beating."

"Have you heard of phantom pains? I bet the Shadows run right past you, too."

"Why would you assume the beating is an ache?" Isa found himself gritting his teeth. The dark swirl of black dust he had grown accustomed to wasn't so much a swirl of dust as it was a growing horde of pebbles with sharp edges.

"Because it is, isn't it? Like having a batshit crazy kangaroo going at everything it can get at in your chest. Your lungs feel bruised and you swear that the kangaroo's kicking is your heart beating and that the hurt is the proof that it's still there, but it isn't, is it, Chuckles? It's been gone for a while now. It's just that every time you realize it, you'd rather reset yourself and forget that you know the truth. Instead you make up other worlds that crumble one after another until there's nothing left but this one."

"Shut up."

"Listen, no one feels for you like I do, but between having you act like numbskull who knows nothing about everything and having you at your full senses, I'll go for the latter, Chuckles. You ain't no good to us with your mind up in the clouds. You've filled four diaries with bullshit. Bullshit that Vexen has been forced to deal with, and honestly, that's slowed us down a great deal."

"Take me to Lea. Now."

Isa didn't even want to breathe so as not to let Xigbar in on the emotions coursing through him. He didn't know what was keeping him from taking a crushing grip around Xigbar's throat and breaking his neck against his seat. He knew that he was strong enough.

"What damned Lea, Saïx? There is no Lea! There's never been a Lea! You made him up. You want me to take a left onto the expressway to Loonsville? Maybe Lea's there? Oh, sorry, the road is closed for those who aren't mentally challenged, so that's a trip you'll have to take yourself!"

The anger that ripped through Isa at that moment burned with a searing white light. It made him blind and deaf to everything around him. It was all there was until he was brought back by the distant panicked yelling and the car coming to an abrupt halt.

Isa held the dagger in his hand. The sharp blade was buried into Xigbar's thigh, and judging by the multiple puncture marks on Xigbar's dark pants, Isa had stabbed him more than once.

By the time Isa felt his hearing come back, he was running down an unfamiliar road with a tight grip around his dagger. Somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear a soft reminder that he should be appalled by what he had done, but that voice was drowned out by the strange curve of his lips that encouraged him to let out a sound that he hadn't heard from himself in what seemed like forever.

He was laughing.


	7. The Hollow Armor Without A Heart

The drops falling from the ceiling fell into the pool of water around Isa. He was used to waking up like this; his teeth chattering with cold, his breath white as snow as he exhaled and flinched when one particular big drop fell onto the bridge of his nose. The first question on his mind was no longer _"Where's Lea?"_

The answer was always _"not here"_ anyway.

Isa sat up reluctantly, not interested in his surroundings as it was easier to assume that he had woken up by the washing machine in his bathroom. The apartment overflowed with water at least once a day. Vexen said it was because Isa insisted on washing sheets that needed no washing, but Isa still firmly believed that it was the bubbles trying to get out.

The big drop of water that had fallen onto the bridge of his nose ran down his cheek second after second until Isa felt like he had to gently brush the tips of his fingers against his cheek to see if his face had broken under the impact of the hit. The tips of his fingers were colored in crimson when he looked at them with a slight tilt of his head.

He brought them to his lips.

The white of his breath covered his act of curiousness. His tongue pressed against his finger tips with the hope that he'd be able to taste it; the crimson.

He let out a relieved laugh that sounded like a muffled sob. His fingers tasted like wet cardboard smelled. The crimson that ran down his cheek had trickled down his throat and was coloring the water around him. He should have been worried, but his mind was overtaken by one simple thought: _I'm not empty._

From a corner of the room, Isa heard a noise; the stealthy tapping of four sticks against the concrete walls. It moved from the corner and up onto the ceiling. _Tap, tap, tap._ The eyelids that were sewn shut, were the first thing Isa's attention was drawn to when he was faced by the strange creature hanging upside down, watching him through the stitches. Isa would have felt his insides freeze with fear if he wasn't frozen already. His instinct to scream and pull away went as soon as it came, and in that time he came to recognize that face.

"What are you doing here?" Isa asked.

"X marks the spot, remember?" Charles's plastered smile grew wider. "There are very few guardians left."

"I don't care."

"The Heart Station will collapse."

"It doesn't matter if it collapses."

"A bit grim, are we?" Charles plopped down from the ceiling and into the water. His head remained upside-down until he stood firmly on the floor. The mechanical sound of Charles' head spinning back into place echoed in the room and traveled down the long corridor outside. "Don't you think Lea would care if you let the Heart Station fall?"

Isa pulled his knees close to his chest and hid his face against his knees, leaving smudges of red on his exposed skin.

"Lea will replace me. The Man on the Moon only gives red strings to those with hearts that matter and are prone to light. I don't really fit the label."

"Now who in the grim world told you such a grim thing?" Charles asked, concerned, and crossed his arms. "Where there's a will, there's a way. The Man on the Moon is easy to persuade. If it's a heart you need, a heart you'll get, tied in a million red strings to whom you desire. Charlotte told you to collect the spheres, didn't she? The Man on the Moon feeds on spheres. Collect as many as you can, and give him the most valuable ones."

The drops kept falling. The dripping had barely been noticeable at first, but the sound became louder until it was all Isa could hear. The ceiling was raining down in pieces, turning into white noise. Once Isa blinked again, he opened his eyes to a different sight altogether. The dripping was still there, but it wasn't the ceiling falling down anymore. It was a downpour tapping against the aluminum roof of the half box in the same material that was held together with wires and soft branches.

The wet rag that was put against Isa's forehead made him back away slightly with a wince at the sting it caused.

"Sit still. It'll just take a second."

Lea frowned slightly as he moved in closer to gently dab the the open wound on Isa's face. Isa gulped and quickly looked away. He stared into the wood of the improvised bench in the half box of aluminum as best as he could, but the white rag was in his way, and what wasn't covered in white was Lea's face.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Lea put the rag down and folded it carefully. "I know you'll do what it takes to get our hearts back, and I'll help you every step of the way. Just, be careful, okay? Don't rush it."

"...our hearts?" Isa's voice cracked slightly. Drops dripped down his face. He couldn't tell if it was drops of rain water, drops of crimson or teardrops that fell, only that it ached to know that Lea could be without a heart as well.

"We're bound together, remember?" Lea smiled weakly. "What you lose, I lose too."

"No..." Isa shook his head slowly and swallowed the growing lump in his throat. "No, it's not − it wasn't supposed to be like this. Lea...Lea, I'm sorry."

Isa hadn't accepted the idea of being heartless. He knew that it was still in there. It had to be. If it wasn't, he'd be more than just a heartless. He'd be dead. The idea had been easy to reject when Xigbar had imposed it, but hearing it from Lea had taken the abstract idea and concretized it in the reality that was supposed to be different from the grim world Isa came from.

The red string.

Isa reached for Lea's hands, hoping to see the red string with the habit of glowing around him. It was a relief and a horror not to see it. Relief because maybe Isa had a heart after all, and horror because maybe Lea didn't. Isa looked down with a gulp, waiting for the string to burn him, but by the time he had convinced himself that he could feel anything through his numb fingers, Lea was gone.

"Lea...?" Isa sobbed softly.

On the empty spot where Lea had sat, stood an empty jar of glass with a label across it; _Memories_.

It was clear to Isa what he had to do. The warnings and rules of moving around in the world of color were forgotten in favor of reclaiming what had been taken away from them. He stepped out in the pouring rain and walked ahead with no intention of stopping until he came across the desirable spheres.

**~o~**

Shadows were born in water. They lurked by every road, behind bushes and trees with only their clicking noises as an indication that they were nearby. Isa felt them watch his every move. They stayed afar until Isa started to come across spheres lodged in the mud. They used the water to teleport themselves from one spot to another, snatching the spheres right out of Isa's hands as they cackled around him.

Isa hadn't expected to grow tired anytime soon, but the raindrops weighed on him as if they clung to him instead of draining away and absorbing into the ground. Whenever he reached for a sphere it seemed like he had to push through a wall of dense matter before he could squeeze his fingers around it.

Three Shadows appeared around him just as he took a light blue sphere and put it in the glass jar. Isa looked up slowly, struggling to breathe through the heavy weight that always seemed to settle on his chest.

"Go away."

No Shadow would have dared to approach him in the grim world, not with the intention to mock him, anyway. The piles of Shadows that Isa had left behind in alleyways and open streets had served as a warning, it was just that it hadn't been Isa the Shadows had been afraid of, it was Saïx.

The Shadows swirled around him, scratching in the air and screeching in morbid delight when their claws cut through his skin. Isa ran his arms around the glass jar protectively and lowered his head as the Shadows swirled faster and their screeching grew louder. He wanted to protect himself, but he couldn't make himself move the way he wanted over his cold and shaking limbs. Even his grip around the glass jar felt weak despite holding it as tightly as he could.

The screeching attracted Shadows from everywhere. They appeared from pools of water and from crevices in the trunks of trees, eager to see what their likes had stumbled upon. It didn't take long before they pried the glass jar from Isa's weakening grip, tilting it over to closer inspect the spheres where they lay scattered on the muddy road, some getting caught in small currents of water.

Isa's attempts to move across the mud to get the spheres back before they were washed away by the rain made the Shadows screech again with glee. The raindrops fell with the weight of rocks.

"Lea..."

Isa tried to find some strength in the name of the person that had managed to show him a night sky full of stars and to fill his worlds with colors and scents that had been kept from him, but in the aftermath of Isa's actions and what they had cost them both, it seemed nothing short of ungrateful to expect Lea to save him from this, too. He struggled, but Isa could barely reach the sphere closest to him.

The ground shook. The shockwaves reverberated in the pools of water. The screeches turned into metallic shrieks, and for a moment, Isa was sure that the Heart Station was collapsing. He opened his eyes just in time to see a pair of large cylindrical legs lift off the ground and straight toward the horde of Shadows. Four giants dressed in thick armor and carrying a large claymore each, chased off the Shadows with ease.

In the moment that followed, when the the Shadows' screeching was replaced with nothing but the sound of running water, Isa thought that he had been left alone once more. The rain had eased ever so slightly. As Isa closed his eyes, the pulsating aches on his body lulling him to sleep, a giant picked him up and walked through the landscape, leaving a mark on the ground with the claymore that it dragged behind.

**~o~**

Isa looked at his reflection in the armor of the giant. He had been brought to safety. They both sat underneath an overgrown Dandelion in a glade of miniature pine trees. Isa had been resting against the stem of the Dandelion when he came to. He hadn't tried to talk to the giant yet. His attention had fallen onto his reflection that reminded him of the aches he had fallen asleep to.

The raindrops had made a ripple effect on his skin in different shades of purple. It was darkest in the middle of each bruise where the drops had hit. The rings around it faded into each other in a pattern. The scratches that had been made by the Shadows ruptured that pattern in thin gashes that had stopped bleeding, but left a trail of disruptive red.

The giant moved its arm and pointed behind Isa with a large finger. Isa looked up at it, trying to catch a glimpse of its face inside that thick helmet, but he couldn't see anything, so he turned around to see his glass jar, still in one piece. The giant hadn't been able to gather all of the spheres that Isa had lost to the Shadows, but the ones it had gotten to were there.

"Thank you." Isa turned back to the giant. His voice was hoarse, his lips were chapped, and his throat dry. For a minute he thought of drinking the rain water, but his reflection quickly reminded him of what the rain would do to him.

Isa pulled his knees closer to his chest and tried to find the least painful way to rest his head against his knees. He didn't try for long before the giant nudged him gently and pointed to the stem of the Dandelion. The water that accumulated in the flower, ran down the stem in small harmless drops. Once Isa had drunk the water and washed his face, he sat back down in front of the giant, curious as to why it was here and why it had helped him.

"Are you in there?" Isa asked and pointed to the armor.

The giant nodded.

"Can you come out?"

The giant shook its head.

"Do you want to come out?"

The giant drew a heart on the left side of its chest and pointed to it with a shake of its head.

"I don't have one either. But, at least you're strong. The rain doesn't hurt you like it hurt me." Isa tried to smile. "I have one like that in the other world." He pointed at the claymore. It was difficult to maintain a conversation with someone that couldn't talk, and yet, just having the giant there, put Isa at ease.

"...I want an armor too. I want to be strong, and make things right." Isa looked himself right in the eye through his reflection.

His thoughts short-circuited as they traveled through his fractured grid. They culminated into this moment where a series of unfortunate events came together to lay ground for a drastic measure of defense. Isa was in a place where no one could hear him no matter how much he called. He knew where he wanted to go, but the roads there were cluttered with mines and barbed wire that he just couldn't manage to go through without help.

Isa put his hands against the cold metal. His eyes were fixated on that of their reflection. The reflection blurred on the sides. The doors to the grim world had been ajar before, and Isa had been scared of what it would do with (to?) the world of color, but now he realized that there had been a reason for those doors to stand ajar; he had to go back home to fix what he had broken.

And at home, he wasn't Isa.

The armor that Isa had been resisting, grew around him and wrapped him in dark layers of blankets until he was safely hidden away where the rain couldn't hurt him.

It was the first time Isa found himself not caring whether he'd ever be able to return to the world of color or not.

**~o~**

The conference room at Oblivion was a room of mirrors and windows. The sight outside was a building identical to the one they were in. The room was duplicated in the mirrors, both in the conference room and in the building across from it, making it seem as if they were caught between universes, all depicting the same thing.

"Saïx."

Isa turned to face the gray-haired man that sat across from him. It was odd to wake up in a place like this. His armor usually dealt with the mundane everyday tasks like reading mission reports and assigning missions to their employees. Meetings rarely brought any new information to light, but with the arrival of a new member into the Organization, Isa had been brought from sleep more often.

"Has Axel given you a report on how the mission went at the castle?"

"No, sir."

Xigbar laughed and leaned onto the table with the shiny surface. Whether Isa was in his armor or not, Xigbar always managed to make the blood boil in his veins with anger. Xigbar had the tendency to look at him as if he was a mouse caught in a maze, frantically trying to search for his way out only to get caught in the traps that electroshocked him as punishment.

"You might wanna shorten his leash, Chuckles. He was recently seen in Twilight Town with Number Thirteen. He clearly doesn't respect your authority − or maybe some things are just that much more important," Xigbar sneered.

Xemnas rarely interfered when Xigbar diligently made comments to upset Isa, and when he did interfere it was subtle − a small gesture with his eyes that didn't say _stop_, just _not now_. To Xemnas, Isa _was_ a mouse caught in a maze, and he watched Isa struggle with fascination, his fingers on the buttons that delivered the electric shocks, but Isa thought that maybe there was a purpose for it. Xemnas was, after all, the Man on the Moon. He held the power to bind people together and to tear them apart.

Isa had been in doubt at first. He preferred not to think about Xemnas's abilities, but when the spheres disappeared from his apartment, one by one, he felt the need to know where they went. Isa had waken up one day, his chest clenching around the empty space between where his heart had been and where the black dust had settled. He had been standing in a white room. On the other end, Xemnas stood next to a marble table where he had put the glass jar. He picked up one sphere after another, watching them melt in his gloved grip.

He had looked up at Isa with neutral expression and said, "That would be all."

Isa learned later that they were rebuilding the Moon. She was still lost and needed help to come back home. The spheres played only a small part in the rebuild, but according to Xemnas, it was a sacrifice well-received. In return, the Moon would give every heartless their heart back, and only then would the Man on the Moon be able to create strings between Isa and Lea.

"The traitors have been taken care of, though," Xigbar said with a shrug and leaned back into his chair. "I haven't got an exact number on the body count, there might have been some collateral damage, but we'll get the figures when Axel works up the will to talk to Chuckles."

Isa's eyelids were feeling heavy. He blinked slowly as he felt the comforting layers of darkness wrap around him and slowly turn into the armor and shield that all of these people called Saïx. Xigbar's words became fireworks in the distance, Xemnas' voice in turn became the bustling crowd on a spring festival. The cutting doubt that Xigbar successfully planted in Isa's mind about his importance transformed into a strange, but completely logical yearning that Isa wanted to take care of before he fell asleep.

"Sir," Isa began in the identical stern ways of his armor. "I have a request to make."

"This oughta be good," Xigbar said with a sneer while Xemnas simply looked back at Isa, waiting for him to speak.

"I'd like a potted cactus."

**~o~**

Saïx was, by all means, a very protective armor. He hid Isa far away from what he thought Isa could get hurt by, but as much as he tried to keep Isa safe, Isa too struggled to keep part in the occurrences of their life. It wasn't merely out of morbid curiosity, or even control; hurtful things could still penetrate through the armor, and when they did, Isa would get hurt. He'd wake up with wounds and no recollection of how they'd come to be, and he didn't like what his mind filled the blanks with.

In one of their many talks, Isa made Saïx promise to keep a diary. The entries were short, straight to the point, and most of the time void of emotion. In a way, Isa was grateful for that. It made the events of everyday easier to accept when they were presented as facts. Facts were indisputable and left no room for doubt; they gave Isa a foundation to build a survival strategy.

It was late at night. Isa sat on the middle of the floor in his living room with his potted cactus nearby, and Saïx's diary by his feet. Most of the wooden floorboards had rotten away with the constant flooding, and all that was left of the living room floor was the ugly concrete. The lounge suite had been shoved up against the wall to cover the windows and the grim view they offered. The living room was the room he used the most, and it teared faster than any other part of the apartment.

Isa was in nothing but underwear and a tank top to air old wounds that had not yet healed. Being locked up wasn't ideal for recuperation, and Isa seemed to gain wounds faster than the others could heal when he spent most of the days in his armor. He massaged his calves absentmindedly as he looked over his knees to read the new entries in the diary.

_Axel RTC'd three hours later than expected. Roxas and Number Fourteen came soon thereafter. Axel asked for conference tomorrow afternoon.. The reports were filed and new have been issued for next week's missions. There's food on the counter._

Isa looked back to the counter and saw the shape of a plate turned upside-down on top of another from where he sat and made a grimace. The food Saïx left for him was rarely appetizing. It was usually mashed bananas with a glass of milk. Isa couldn't remember if it was something he had enjoyed at some point in time, but he sure hated it now. There were lots of things he could eat that were soft and easy to swallow, but Saïx had it in for mashed bananas.

"At least we know why my legs feel sore today," Isa said to the cactus.

Isa had asked Axel to be on time with the mission reports. Every mission had been sorted by difficulty level and expected time of completion. Each mission was handed to the employee that was best fit for the job. Most finished right before expected time of completion, others soon after. Axel and the two he was bound to were always late by at least three hours.

Saïx had to wait for them until they came back. It was his job to keep tabs on everyone, make sure that they were in the castle before curfew unless there were missions to deal with, and he needed to have a complete file of mission reports to hand over to Xemnas at the end of the day.

When a portal of darkness finally opened up in the main lounge, Isa would wake up to the distant sound of giggling as the blankets holding him in place inside his armor clenched around his chest tight enough to completely wake him from his sleep. Saïx would struggle to usher him into a dark and far off corner in their shared mind, but he failed once their mind could only focus on Axel's quick glare their way before he turned back to the child and the tin can to shush them. They'd immediately fall into a silence with neutral expressions on their faces as they followed Axel's lead and reached their mission reports to Saïx.

It only had to happen a few times for Isa to decide that he would teach himself to sleep through those moments, too.

Isa reached for the pen that was bound to the diary with a yellow string and decided to scribble a note to Saïx. He wondered what Vexen would have to say about this. Vexen hadn't been fond of his compulsive washing or his eating habits, but what had frustrated him the most was Isa's relentless insisting that there was a difference between Isa and Saïx.

_It's okay to sit down. The couches aren't solely there for decorative purposes._

"Don't leave notes to yourself. Only crazy people do that," Isa was sure Vexen would have said.

Too bad that Vexen had become one of the many mines cluttering their road.

Crazy or not, Isa knew that he had to create a distance between himself and Saïx. It was the only way he could maintain his armor and remain strong enough to keep working towards his goal, but given how things were developing, he knew it would come a day when he would no longer be able to ignore the cracks that had emerged in his defense.


	8. All Hail The Bananas

As creatures caught in the seemingly endless wasteland between existing and not existing, they needed a sense of purpose. They were ghosts with an excuse to stay in a world of matter while they struggled to take back that one thing that gave them value. In the meantime, their value was measured by their usefulness, which in turn was determined by how hard they worked.

Saïx was up early. His day began before everyone else's, and he hurried to get ready for the tasks that awaited him. Much like everything else, it was a struggle. He had to remove all the band-aids and bandages that Isa had been putting on the night before, for wounds that Saïx couldn't see.

He was standing in the main lounge, mission list in hand, half an hour before the first employees arrived. No one approached him to start their mission before seven o'clock. They much preferred to sit down on the white couches and stare into nothing, maybe even mingle amongst themselves before the clock on the wall above the entrance rang in a soft tune.

Most of their employees were deemed useful. There were days when Saïx could look at one of them and think;_ We could do without you_. But in the end, it wasn't up to him who stayed and who didn't. His purpose was to make sure that everything moved like clockwork. It lay in his interest to make way for Xemnas's plans, at least to the point where it benefited Isa, and by extension, Lea.

And yet, he couldn't keep himself from wanting to eradicate the tin can that followed Axel around like a lost puppy. It kept looking down on the floor as if there'd be anything for it there. It was small and broke down constantly. Its function was already filled by Roxas. It was an experiment in the works. On the off chance that the experiment succeeded, the Organization would have two Keyblade-wielders, but it was more likely that one would absorb the other, or worse, they'd neutralize each other and leave the Organization with nothing. The tin can was, by all definitions, useless and unworthy of the time it was given.

"Just let me handle all the talking," Axel said in a whisper to the two behind him as they all approached Saïx.

Saïx had already reached for their mission cards when Axel turned to him with a heavy sigh and a forced smile on his lips.

"Good morning!" Axel began and rubbed his hands together nervously.

"What do you want?"

"Straight to the point, huh? Fine. Works for me." Axel rested his hands onto his hips and glanced over at the boy and the tin can before he continued. "I know that I'm paired up with Xion today, but I was think−"

"Yes. You're off to Halloween Town. You have to recon for Shadows. It should be easy, even for _that_." Saïx glared quickly at the tin can that did nothing but stare at the floor.

Axel clenched his jaw. There wasn't a trace left of the polite facade he had put up just seconds ago when he decided to let this one slide only to continue with what he had planned on saying.

"Wouldn't it be better if Xion went with Roxas today? Why not everyday? They use similar weapons. Roxas knows what he's doing and he could show Xion the ropes much better than I can. Wouldn't that be beneficial for the Organization?"

"The mission cards have already−"

Axel moved in closer and lowered his voice to not have his curious bystanders hear what he was about to say, not that they didn't try to eavesdrop by leaning forward slightly in hopes to catch the magic words that made Saïx cave in for Axel's propositions.

"I'll do anything if you let them work together."

Saïx looked away from Axel's piercing glare. He remained silent for a moment while he thought about what he could ask for in return.

"Anything?" he asked.

"Don't get any weird ideas," Axel warned.

Saïx crossed his arms as he fell back into thought. He wasn't sure what Axel defined as weird. Whatever Saïx said seemed to strike Axel as weird, and the look of disbelief he'd receive for it was one Saïx wasn't fond of at all.

"Alright," Saïx finally agreed in a quiet tone. "They can work together, but in return you have to bring me soil, bananas and band-aids."

There was clearly a "what" hanging off Axel's tongue when his eyes widened slightly at the odd request, but Axel had gotten what he wanted at almost no cost, so he simply gave a quick nod and stepped away with a smile on his face as he turned to his eagerly waiting friends.

Saïx was faintly aware of their cheerful banter as they said goodbye to Axel and went into the portal of darkness that Saïx had opened up for them. Axel didn't stick around for long after that. He took his mission card and went on his way without as much as a backward glance.

Saïx stood put, wondering where he had seen someone smile like Axel had before. After a moment of contemplation, he decided that it had been in an illustration in one of the old books in the storeroom downstairs. Once he walked back to his office to tend to his other tasks, he thought of going to the storeroom to find and steal that illustration and give it to his eerily silent cactus as a face.

**~o~**

Vacations felt unnecessary. There wasn't much that could be done. Vacations were days where nothing happened and only prolonged their wait to reach the goal of completing the Moon. That's how it seemed to Saïx, anyway, but judging by the speed in which everyone had disappeared for their day off, he might be the only one feeling that way.

It was the night before said day of vacation. Saïx sat in his office with only his desk light on. He had finished most pending paperwork, but he had decided to take a small break to read one of the many books he had decided to bring out of storage. He had read it before, or at least tried to.

The book was written in a foreign language, but after skimming through it a few times, Saïx had caught up on certain patterns, and the pictures that went along with it helped him figure out what it was about. So far, he had gathered that it was about a certain group of people who lived in a strange world, and their relationship to rain. These people could summon the rain with the help of rituals, and they could also make it stop raining. It was the latter that interested Saïx the most.

No one in the Organization seemed affected by the constant downpour in their world. Saïx could make it outside for a while before the rain started to wear on him, and the blankets of darkness that held Isa protected began to pull away. He didn't have any missions to take care of outside this world, so he wanted to make it stop raining for at least a day to be able to walk down the streets and see the spots of colors pass him by.

In most pictures depicting the rituals for stopping the rain, the three people involved would be eating bananas. They sat on a small pile of banana peels, and in the sky the dark clouds pulled away.

Saïx hadn't breathed a word of this to anybody. He knew he needed two more people to eat enough bananas to make it stop raining, but he was far too aware of what everyone thought of him to ask for help. He was stuck with the mission of eating for three until the dark clouds pulled away and he could step outside.

His cheeks were round with bananas, and he chewed through it all carefully before he started to swallow. He had a small bunch on his desk beside the book, and he peeled yet another banana as soon as he felt as he had room in his mouth for more.

"Saïx?" Axel knocked on the door and waited for answer.

Saïx quickly put the bananas and book into a drawer and closed it quickly as he tried to chew and swallow faster. It soon became obvious that it would take too long for him to swallow it all, and he simply hoped that Axel would ignore him like he tended to.

"Yes?"

Axel stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He scratched the back of his neck and took a deep breath to ready himself for the talk with Saïx.

"You're sending me on a mission to the castle again, and you wanted me to stop by for a quick briefing?" Axel reminded Saïx when the silence stretched for too long.

Saïx nodded and reached for the file he had prepared. He looked down on it and flipped through it to seem as if he was skimming for the important points, but he could only do it for so long before Axel started to get impatient.

"I overheard Xigbar and Xemnas talk about the Room of Awakening," Saïx began. "They are certain that the room is at the castle. You have to find it before they do. It'll give us leverage, and maybe we can speed up the process of regaining our hearts. You'd have to be here by noon to start your mission..."

"What happened to your face?"

"Nothing."

Axel stared at him with that same look of disbelief that seemed to have become a natural reaction to anything Saïx did or said.

"...I was hungry, and I was eating when you knocked on the door."

"Right. Is this the updated map you have of the place? The last one you gave me was useless." Axel grabbed the file and looked through it to see if there was anything he didn't know in there.

"It changes structure. The castle. It's never the same. So mark the room and corridors you look through."

"You do realize that this is a huge castle? It's going to take forever to find that room, and even if I do find it, we don't even know what it does."

"It's what we've got."

"Yeah, well, I'm getting pretty damn tired of taking shots in the dark." Axel turned to reach for the door, but he stopped and turned on his heel slightly to glance at Saïx. "I don't know what your problem with Xion is, but if you want our deal to last, you'll stop treating her the way you do."

_What do you see in that useless tin can?_ Saïx didn't get to ask his question. Axel walked out of the office to enjoy his day of vacation. Saïx picked his bananas and book out of his drawer and absentmindedly wondered how there were people who could enjoy things without purpose.

**~o~**

"What an uneventful life you live, Chuckles." Xigbar's voice echoed in the main lounge as he walked in and gave the empty room a look. "Isn't it past mission time? Why are you still here and with that long face?"

Xigbar laughed at the spiteful glare Saïx shot at him.

"I'm waiting for the rest to return."

"The rest, huh? Let me guess, Axel and the kids? Man, they sure leave you hanging, don't they? What could be taking so long? Did they catch a big mean Heartless? But every time? That's a little bit suspicious, isn't it? I'm sure they'd write that in their mission reports."

"Shouldn't you be doing something?"

"But I am, Chuckles! Important stuff, too! How long will you let those three get away with this? We're all aware of how the situation with Xion is going, but Axel keeps reporting that everything is going fine. We know the truth, don't we, Chuckles? _It _isconstantly breaking and hindering our plans. What's fine about that?"

"It's not my place to make those decisions. If Xemnas suspects that something isn't going as it should, he only needs to order its demise and be over with it."

"Do you know where they go while you stand here and wait?" Xigbar asked instead, his casual sneer only visible as a glint in his eye. He knew he had Saïx's attention, even though Saïx did his best to focus his eyes onto the wall on the other side of the room to make it seem as though he was ignoring Xigbar.

"There's a world a stone's throw away from this one, filled with vibrant colors. As soon as you step out of the portal of darkness you're hit with the smell of flowers from a flower shop nearby. There's a pancake house around every corner and that scent of melted butter and syrup is so heavenly that it would make the dead crawl out of their graves for one bite. And in the middle of town, there's an old ice cream shop where they sell homemade sea salt ice cream. Every day, after completed mission, they go there, squabbling over whose turn it is to buy. Looking at them, you'd think they'd lived there all their lives. If I didn't know better, I'd say they look downright happy. That's not all, though, Chuckles. There's more."

"What?" Saïx asked, curious and silently furious. His fingers clenched around his notepad, and for a moment he forgot to breathe.

"There's a clock tower right by the train station. It's the tallest building in town, and from up there you can see everything that town has to offer. It's a sight for sore eyes, Chuckles. The kind of sight that'll put your soul at ease. They go up there, ice cream in hand, and they sit down with their feet dangling off the side to watch the sun set. They'll talk for hours about nothing and everything. Hell, they've even mentioned you."

"Really?" A breath caught in Saïx's throat in a way that made him think that Isa had woken up. "What do they say?"

"Well, a whole lot'a things, Chuckles. Most of it are things like _he's a really bad person_ or _be careful with what you say or there won't be a way to shut him up_ or _why does he have to be so annoying_, _who made him boss_, you get the picture. Not that you'd expect anything else."

"...yeah. Does Axel say that too?"

"Are you kidding? No one's more annoyed by you than Axel is!" Xigbar laughed and gave Saïx a quick pat on the shoulder. "Alright, Chuckles. This was fun. We don't talk enough. I think we could both benefit from each other. You've got a lot of useful information, and you know that I have useful information. How about a little trade?"

"No."

"Ah, well. Can't blame a guy for trying. Have fun standing here for, oh, let's see, it's one o'clock now, the sun won't set for another three hours. Wow, let's say four, you are in for a challenge, Chuckles. Tip of my hat for you."

When Saïx returned to his apartment that night, he didn't go straight to sleep as he usually did. He put out a small box of band-aids on the floor in the living room, he put the still faceless cactus next to it, and he made sure to write down the only note he'd leave that night; _Eat this!_

He put it next to the plate with mashed bananas and took a deep, shaky breath, letting a small prayer pass his lips. He hoped that he had been enough to cushion the hurt he was certain would affect Isa in some way. As time went on, he was slowly made aware that he shouldn't be counting on anybody to gain his heart back. Maybe he was better off alone after all, and though most evidence pointed to that, he knew Isa would want to give Axel a choice before making a decision.

**~o~**

When a heart breaks, it hardens to prevent future damage. Saïx was without a heart, but he was an armor, and the cracks that had emerged lately had fortified him and prevented Isa from bleeding through as much as he had been doing in the past. It was one of the many functions that made him useful and strong.

Xion, on the other hand, had broken once more. The tin can who seemed to be made of steel, but really was a failed experiment wrapped in tin foil that only reflected what people wanted to see. A mistake that they never should have made, that's what he had called Xion, but it wasn't until he did it in front of Axel and Roxas that it had repercussions.

"Be honest with me for once! You know what's going on with her, so tell me."

"Like you're honest with me?"

Axel shot him an accusing glare and reluctantly admitted his own tendency at dishonesty. "What's happening with her?"

"It's broken, it's as simple as that. There is no use of it anymore, and it shouldn't be amongst us. The only thing difficult to understand is what you two see in it."

It had been fun to see the hurt and confusion in Axel's eyes. He couldn't deny that Xion was broken. Axel's only defense was that Xion was his friend. That was Xion's only value, and in the long scheme of things, the worth of a friend was almost equal to nothing.

What would Roxas's reaction be when Axel told him about what the Organization's second in command thought of their tin can? Would they still sit together and laugh as they watched the sun set? Or would they hurry home after every mission to make sure that Xion hadn't been eradicated for good?

Their uncertainty was strangely satisfying. Axel didn't dare to be as cocky as he usually was around Saïx. He would still refuse to look at him, but at least he looked onto the ground and not off into the distance when Saïx spoke to him, and his answers weren't as sarcastically polite either. The feeling of power born from these changes fortified Saïx as an armor, and for the first time things were looking good.

But power only works for as long as there is fear. As the fear disappears, so does the power, and for the person towering over the others, the fall is harsh and always unexpected.

It had been a ridiculous sight, seeing Axel carrying the tin can with such care and gentleness as Roxas walked beside them with worry written over his face in a sad frown. Saïx almost felt the need to laugh with the victorious feeling that bubbled up within him. How many times was it now? Would Axel still report Xion as a good and reliable colleague when he had to carry the tin can back into its room for the umpteenth time?

"So it broke again. That didn't take long." Saïx walked up to them and eyed the pile of metal sticking out of the black coat with disdain.

He didn't expect them to say anything. They usually didn't. He was used to hearing their gloved fists clench in anger as they quickly glared at him before moving along, but the fear that kept them from saying anything was no longer there. It had been replaced by something else.

"She's not an 'it'!" Roxas spat, staring straight at Saïx. There was a flash of light right before Axel walked forward, his jaws clenched tightly.

It didn't seem like he'd say anything. What Roxas had said was enough, but then he did something he hadn't done in ages. He deliberately stared Saïx right in the eye and made sure he had his attention when he walked up as close as he'd ever get willingly.

"_It wasn't your fault then."_

The gentle voice of a distant memory suddenly echoed through Saïx's mind and coaxed Isa out of his hiding place to a reality that was nothing like it had once been.

"Keep your mouth shut."

The black dust that he had grown accustomed to just being there, stirred up in his chest. It hadn't done that in years, at least not like this. It spun fast, scratching against his ribcage. Saïx was certain what had to be done. Axel had put them aside. The past meant nothing to him, but Isa insisted on hanging on. They had crossed a line. Axel had been clear on what he thought about Saïx's way of speaking about and to Xion. It had been wrong to comment on the tin can's uselessness when Axel was clearly worried.

There was only one thing they could do, Isa decided.

They had to apologize in the only way they knew how.

**~o~**

Xemnas stared at Saïx intently from where he sat in his chair in the conference room. It wasn't one that bothered Saïx. It was one of the many things he had grown accustomed to during his time here. Xigbar's stare, on the other hand, was one that made Saïx wish for a weapon to smash Xigbar's good eye out and stomp it against the ground.

"Someone used the main computer without authorization," Saïx said as one thing in the line of many that he had to report to Xemnas. He didn't like having to report about everything, but in doing so, he had gained their trust and diverted their attention from his occasional spying.

"Someone?" Xigbar laughed. "Well, pull me backwards and color me pink, are we really gonna pretend that we don't know who it was?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"C'mon now, Chuckles. We all know that Xion is behind it. She's been digging around graves with family secrets we don't want aired. She's becoming too much of a hassle."

"Nonsense," Saïx said with a neutral expression. "Everything is going well according to the reports I've received and according to what I've witnessed."

Xigbar laughed again and slapped his own knee in delight. "Kinda what you'd expect from a guy with a heart, huh?"

"What?" Saïx frowned at the mumble Xigbar threw his way, but before Xigbar had the chance to repeat what he had said, Xemnas cut in.

"We'll let it be," he said calmly. "Xion is moving toward her destiny as planned. The spectacle about to unfold will lead us closer to our goal, and to our destiny."

Xigbar smirked at the addition and stared at Saïx with amusement.

Saïx had been part of these conversations for a very long time. Meetings like these were familiar and part of the routine that made living in this world bearable, and still, it always felt like he was missing a big part of what was being discussed, like hearing an inside joke over and over again and never being let in on its meaning. It was mostly annoying, and the small part that wasn't, was only a painful reminder that it didn't matter where he was or how useful he could be, he still didn't belong.


	9. Breaking Point

Xion had escaped the Organization. It was what Xemnas had concluded in one of the rare occasions when everyone gathered in the conference room. The reflection of the mirrors looked crowded with everyone sitting around the table, but Saïx was the only one who seemed bothered by it.

Saïx had glanced over at Axel during the meeting. They hadn't talked since Xion broke down. Axel had been difficult to cross paths with. In the mornings, Axel walked up to him, snatched his mission card and went on his way without a word. Saïx had wanted to let him know that there was no need to worry about Xion's fate within the Organization, it had all been taken care of. At least there hadn't been anything to worry about until it became known that she had escaped.

Roxas had been the only one to speak up at hearing the news. He was the only one who insisted that they should search for her and bring her back. It was ironic considering that Xion could easily become Roxas's downfall.

Saïx didn't really care about what they did or which one of them survived. He thought he wouldn't have to care, but after the meeting, as he walked into his office, he was surprised to see Xigbar sitting in his chair, waiting for him.

"Chuckles, you've really gone and done it this time," he said with a sigh. He leaned his head against his hand and pulled his shoulders up high in a dramatic shrug. "To be honest with ya, there's really only one way for you to fix this."

"What are you talking about?"

"What am I talking about? Man, you sure have a selective memory. Who recently decided that Xion wasn't a problem, huh? Who basically told us to ignore her in favor of whatever the hell Axel promised you?"

"If, if Xion escaping is a problem, why aren't we looking?" Saïx tried to keep calm at realizing his mistake of meddling in affairs that weren't his to meddle in, but he had stuttered, and Xigbar could smell his fear.

Xigbar got out of the chair and flashed Saïx a condescending smile.

"Chuckles," Xigbar began. "The problem isn't that Xion escaped. The problem is _how _and with what she escaped. See, we try to run a pretty tight ship here, but it's difficult when Xion, in this case, is granted access to every piece of classified information she can come across as if this was some goddamn library. Do you see the problem, Chuckles, or ain't the dots close enough for ya?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"That's more like it," Xigbar said and gave Saïx a pat on the shoulder. "Your only mission is to keep Axel and the kid from finding her. We'll have to get to her first. You think you can handle that, Chuckles?"

"Yes." Saïx lowered his head slightly, absentmindedly fidgeting with the corner of a loose page of a notebook on the side of the desk he was standing by.

"Alright. I'm gonna trust you on this, Chuckles. But know that you've messed up bad. So to make sure you follow through, we have to make you part of a punishment game. You understand, don't you?" Xigbar tried to sound concerned, but his attempt only made him laugh at himself.

"A tiny bird whispered in my ear that you don't like rain. Now, you're as weird as they come so I'm ready to take this bird's word for it, and pay close attention now, Chuckles, 'cause this concerns you." Xigbar walked up close and waited for Saïx to look up at him. "Mess up, and you'll be left out in the rain until I can't hear any bones crack. Are we clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Excellent. See, this is what I like about you, Chuckles. You're quick to get it. We're gonna get along great. You'll see."

Xigbar didn't bother with the door. He opened a portal of darkness and disappeared with a wave.

**~o~**

Axel hurried down the corridor, each step echoing as he buried his heel into the floor. He looked back when he heard someone else hurry up behind him, and he clearly couldn't hold back a snort at the sight of Saïx.

"Axel! Axel, wait. I need to talk to you." Saïx reached for Axel's wrist, but his fingers needed only to brush against Axel for him to pull his arm away as if Saïx's fingers had burned him. "It'll only take a second."

"What do you want now?" Axel asked, clenching his hands into fists almost as a reflex.

"Don't look for Xion. You won't benefit from it at all. Just listen to orders and stand back. Xemnas has everything under control."

"I won't _benefit _from it? Are you serious?" Axel gritted his teeth. His hands were quick to grab Saïx by his collar and shove him against the nearest wall. Whatever fear he might have had for the power Saïx once held, was far gone and had been replaced by anger for the hurt that Saïx had caused those Axel considered friends.

"I know that it doesn't make sense now, but...just promise me that you won't look for her."

"'Her'? So you can only acknowledge her existence like a decent human being when there's something in it for you?" His grip around the collar of Saïx's black coat tightened, and he pushed his other hand onto Saïx's upper ribcage hard, his eyes crazed with anger. "You knew all along, didn't you? About what Xion was and what would happen to her and Roxas? You knew all of it and never once thought about telling me? I can't even look Roxas in the eye anymore. How do you suppose I tell him, huh? How do I tell him that Xion might disappear?"

"I'll help you figure that out if you promise not to look for her." Saïx paused before he reluctantly added, "Please."

Axel released his grip, staring Saïx down, looking for an ounce of honesty in the eyes he avoided making contact with on principle.

"And you'll tell me everything," Axel said.

"I can't."

"You'll tell me everything or you can forget it. I can't deal with any more half-truths. It's all or nothing."

"Fine...I'll tell you everything I know. Promise that you won't look for Xion."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Axel," Saïx tried to keep his voice firm, but it trembled slightly when he got caught in Axel's glare. "Promise me."

"I promise."

"Okay." Saïx gave a quick nod and took a step from the wall. "You're dismissed."

**~o~**

The raindrops in the city were much bigger than those from the world of color. They fell from much greater heights, from clouds that were darker and had an infinite amount of water. It seemed that the clouds came straight from the Heart Station because it never stopped raining. There were moments when it seemed like it would stop, it seemed like the clouds would disperse and reveal a big and empty black sky, but instead the sky laughed in the form of thunder and lightning.

At that point they knew. God was real and He was still upset with those that had been born as Lucids, even as they were stuck in an afterlife where there weren't any strings binding them to the half that would make them whole.

It had been difficult to keep track of who he was when all he could think of was the pain of having the drops drill into every bone in his body until they snapped and spread fractures across the remains. He was certain that he had been Saïx at first when the raindrops ran off his coat and into small puddles around him, but by the time his ribcage collapsed he was Isa. The pained whimpers in between the ragged gasps for air would never come from an armor.

In the end, it didn't matter whether he was Isa or Saïx, neither ever lost consciousness. At times they saw a blur frame their vision, and it promised to take them to a place where the rain couldn't reach them. They made the mistake of believing that promise too, only to later find out that the blur had been a concussion.

Time was a concept lost on him. He just knew that 'a long time' didn't quite cut it, and it was far from over, even as he was brought inside.

"I think the rain cleaned you up nicely, Chuckles. Definitely gave you some colors. You like colors, don't you? Hey, Xaldin, how about giving that nose a fix? Look at him. How am I supposed to make a point if I can't even hear myself think with that wheezing? Throw in a lung too."

Even through everything else, Isa managed to feel grateful as Xaldin cast a healing spell that fixed the areas Xigbar had requested. Isa had been kept at the edge. Always functioning enough to experience his punishment. This wasn't any different. Xigbar didn't mind Isa's constant trembling or occasional whimper and labored breathing. It all seemed like music in Xigbar's ears.

"Can I ask you something, Chuckles? When you told Axel to promise to follow orders, did you make sure that it was a pinky promise? 'Cause that's where they always getcha. It's the fine print that counts, Chuckles. You oughta know that by now." Xigbar sat down on a chair and pulled himself closer to the stretcher where they had put Isa. "Please tell me that you've got rain in your eyes." Xigbar laughed as he leaned in for closer inspection.

Isa tried to respond, but his reply was barely audible.

"Can't hear you, Chuckles. You gotta speak up." Xigbar leaned his ear closer when Isa tried again. "'Sorry'? You're sorry? Well, I'd be sorry too in your shoes. This is what the punishment game is for, Chuckles. It makes it easier for people to realize their mistakes and come clean with them. It's a spiritual thing, and you know that we're here to help you, right? We're here to help. If we weren't, would we have put you on a stretcher instead of a chair? Before you answer that question, remember that your spine is probably as messed up as your face. If that's not help, I don't know what is."

"I should start healing him now, unless we want permanent damage," Xaldin cut in from where he stood by the feet of the stretcher.

"No permanent damage today. Don't worry, Chuckles. This was just a small lesson, that's all. To show you that you still have the Organization's trust, I'm gonna give you a mission. It's very easy, but also very important. Now that Xion is back, we're in a bit of a struggle. If both Roxas and Xion stay, they'll knock each other out. We can't have that. We need _one_ Keyblade-wielder to succeed with our mission. Your task is to confront Axel and make him choose one for us. Once he's made the choice, one will beat the other with his help and everything will be merry again."

"Xigbar..." Xaldin urged.

"If you fail, Chuckles, that's it for you. You'll be turned into a Dusk and killed by your very own Nobodies, and that would be a shame. We've worked very hard on you, Chuckles. You can't fail us now."

Xaldin chose that moment to start healing him. Isa lit up with a luminescent green with the amount of spells thrown at him. The light wrapped around every broken, smashed and fractured part of him. He had foolishly hoped for relief, but the healing process turned out to be more painful than the punishment. He could feel his bones grow back and how the ends of his torn nerves were stretched and reattached with the rest. The first impulses of electricity that decided to travel down the newly regenerated nerves left Isa burning with pain. He screamed as soon as he could, gasping for air through petrified sobs as soon as he heard Xaldin mumble the spell again.

And it was just about the funniest thing Xigbar had ever seen.

**~o~**

It had been difficult to look at Axel when he had asked him to make a decision; Roxas or Xion. Axel had seemed torn, maybe even angry with him for making him choose. Roxas and Xion were both important to him, but only one of them was real. The other was a puppet made in a lab. It didn't have a real past, it had an illusion of a present, and a dark future. Ending Xion's short life would be an act of mercy at this point, but Axel wanted to keep and save them both.

Isa had tried to reach out to him. He feared who might be eavesdropping on their conversation, and the only way he could think of reminding Axel of his commitment to Isa was by using a name that hadn't passed his lips in forever.

"_There's too much on the line, Lea."_

It didn't have the desired effect. Axel only looked at him tiredly, as if hearing him speak was enough to drain him of energy. Axel didn't talk back that day. What Isa or Saïx said had no importance to him anymore. Both were just annoying background noise that he could've done without if it didn't occasionally say something that he could use. The look in Axel's eyes before he turned to walk away, told Saïx that Axel was going to use this information to protect his friends in whichever way he knew how.

It was the first time Isa doubted his persistence in fighting for Lea's heart when maybe it would just be easier to admit defeat and not have to deal with the constant pain and reminders of failure.

**~o~**

Xemnas's plans were back on track, and they needed to be kept on track. Saïx had been ordered to finish the devices that would be needed to complete the plan. He wasn't sure what he was working on, only that he needed to finish it on time. Xigbar dropped by occasionally to make sure that everything was running smoothly, and to remind Saïx of what little influence he had on Axel.

Saïx tried to convince himself that he didn't care. Axel was going to do what he wanted, and it would be easier to roll with the punches if Saïx simply stayed out of it and accepted what was and what would be. It turned out that he didn't even listen to himself. He had the need to remind Axel that they only needed one of the Keyblade-wielders. _Just one. And don't meddle. Don't meddle or Xigbar will come after you next. With what armor can I protect you then?_

Isa had insisted on being on the send-off the day Xigbar decided that there would be a special three-man mission to a world that wasn't particularly crowded with Heartless. It was obvious what the mission was for. Axel was taking too long in making a decision, so Xigbar was going to help him along the way by showing him how it was done.

Isa had drawn a sigh of relief when he learned that Xion would go with them. The mission wasn't a punishment game for Axel, it was Xion's execution, and in a choice between the two, Isa would easily pick Axel.

Roxas had shown up, but he wasn't given much attention. All he needed to do was to recuperate and start slaying Heartless. That was his purpose and his function. With Xion taken care of, everything would go back to normal, and all focus would finally go to where it should have been all along; finishing the Moon and getting their hearts back.

The mission seemed easy enough, but Xion got away. Axel let her go and blamed it on her strength. It would've been a believable lie – she had been too strong for Xigbar, too – but Axel's small flinch when Roxas hurried up to them told the truth Saïx didn't really need to know.

He didn't want to care, but there was a searing burning in his veins that felt as if they were suffocating him muscle by muscle. It would only go away in one of two ways; either he was going to get hurt or he'd end up hurting someone else, and by the way things were now, he wanted nothing more than to hear the agonizing scream of someone that wasn't him.

**~o~**

Fact said that they were all without hearts; Nobodies, a species that shouldn't be but that was, abominations born in the margins of darkness and light. As such, they were born without strings of fate. They were fated to be incomplete until they regained the hearts they had lost, some out of carelessness, others out of need. It's what Isa had been fed for eternities, it was what he repeated like a mantra to those who questioned these facts, and in a sense it had become the fundamental truth upon which he acted on.

Axel was the same as him. At a point in time they had been bound by Isa's lies that had taken the shape of a string of fate, and that string had been enough to make them both fall into an abyss of darkness that Isa desperately wanted to get them out of. Why was it then that it seemed like the string of fate binding Axel to Roxas and Xion had survived the transition? They only needed to tug it to have the other follow. They didn't need to voice their need for help, their distress seemed to find its way through the red string and tug at Axel in a way that made him understand that he was needed.

It wasn't fair.

How many times had Isa laid broken on the ground, calling for Lea through gasps in hopes that he'd come? How many times had Isa stood close in hopes that Axel would see through his armor and notice Isa pleas for help with his burdens? He knew he didn't have a right to be angry. Lea had never been bound to Isa by choice. He had always searched for those he belonged with. Both Lea and Axel could hear them call through time, and he'd find a way to be there for them.

Saïx knew that, but it wasn't any less crushing to witness, and he did what he could to cushion the blow.

The Dusks' rumblings had increased as of late. They moved from room to room like bubbles and whispered of events not meant to reach Saïx's ears.

There were a lot of things he was kept in the dark about. Xemnas, Xigbar, Axel, they all fed him enough information to keep him going and dig for missing pieces. It skewed his perception of the reality he had gotten used to. He knew better than to trust his ability to glue the pieces together correctly, instead he relied on the Dusks to tell him what no one else would.

In turn, as a thank you, Saïx fed them as often as he could. It was a task that he had made his early on, but he had never thought that the Dusks or any of the lesser Nobodies had preferences when it came to food. Keeping a list of favorite meals kept Saïx occupied when he'd much rather slam a fist through a wall, but even repeating the long list in his mind wasn't enough to settle the anger when the Dusks whispered messages about Axel and his possible future plans.

There had been tension between Axel, Roxas and Xion.

It had seemed like their friendship would come to an end, and with the truths Axel had been withholding from them coming to light, the Dusks whispered of strained strings about to snap. Saïx thought that maybe Axel's tie to Roxas and Xion was made out of polyester; it would break and fall to the ground without protest, its ends slowly coming undone. But it seemed that the strain was that of an unbreakable elastic string; if any of them were to fall off the edge, they'd bounce back, and always toward each other.

There were murmurs about Roxas leaving, just like Xion.

Roxas was tugging the red string that bound him to Axel. He wasn't doing it on purpose, but Axel would follow. Saïx couldn't let either of them leave. His mantra was wearing thin, he couldn't find much comfort in the explanation for his emptiness, but knowing that Axel would be there, albeit unwillingly, filled out the void that threatened to drown Saïx, and by extension, Isa too.

When Saïx started to run low on things to break in the small space that was his, the hurt started to ebb away. It didn't disappear. It only transformed into something else that gave him strength to stand and move forward: Fury.

He was standing by the entrance to Oblivion when he heard the approaching steps down the stairs. Roxas was going to leave through the front door just to show how indifferent he was about the mess he'd leave behind. The consequences were nothing to him when he had the power of the Keyblade at the tip of his fingers.

"You've got a lot of nerve thinking we'll just let you leave."

"I don't need your permission. Get out of my way!"

The Keyblade materialized in Roxas's hand as soon as he reached out for it. There was no doubt in his mind that he would have to fight his way out of Oblivion to gain the freedom he wanted, and Saïx was too eager to put Roxas in his place to even consider talking him out of leaving.

Saïx's claymore materialized in his hand, its weight a comfort and assurance for all the harm he could cause with it.

The first hit landed and echoed in the empty lobby. Roxas had run up to him, quick as a weasel, with the Keyblade high above his head. Saïx had thought that there would be more strategy behind Roxas's attacks; that maybe it was something a weapon as exclusive as the Keyblade would require, but Roxas fought with anger and trusted that the lightness of his weapon and the speed with which he moved would be sufficient to beat his enemy.

Unfortunately for Roxas, Saïx didn't have to land many hits to throw him off his feet. The speed Roxas had relied on failed him too when Saïx saw him move as if he was pushing through water. The Keyblade swooshed right by Saïx's face and he grabbed the weapon with one hand and lanced his claymore at Roxas with his other. Roxas flew to the ground with the power of the impact when the claymore hit his side. He clenched his hands around the handle of the Keyblade, mentally ordering his body to move despite the shock from the hit.

"How did you think fighting me would work out when Xion is absorbing all of your power? You're weak and you're wasting away because of Xion."

Roxas frowned and glared at Saïx from where he lay.

"Wh...what did you say?"

"You're wasting away because of Xion. She's absorbing your power and everything you think you are. Given time, you two would have become one entity, but there were interferences in the plan."

Saïx walked up to him, dragging his claymore against the floor and letting the metallic screech of it send Roxas into panic. For a split moment there was fear in Roxas's blue eyes. He could only watch as Saïx reached for him and pulled him up by his collar.

"Axel interfered. To save you, that puppet, and the abomination you call friendship."

The material of the coat cut against Roxas' throat when Saïx held him high with one hand. Roxas's feet dangled in the air. He was light and small, far too easy to lift up for someone who could destroy everything they had been working for.

"You don't know what friendship is," Saïx hissed, his hands clenching tighter around the fabric in his hand. "It's something you'll never be able to feel − you need to have a heart to feel."

Roxas scratched and tugged at Saïx's wrist to get out of his choking grip. It wasn't until Saïx noticed Roxas's lips turning blue that he tossed him against the nearest wall. Nothing good would come out of ending Roxas's pitiful life here. He was still needed to complete the plan.

Saïx took a deep breath and glared at Roxas.

"You don't have memories or a heart. You didn't even have a name before you were taken in by the Organization. Do you think the outside world will welcome you with open arms? The Organization gave you everything you are, and there is no one else that will tolerate your existence."

Roxas stumbled up onto his feet and leaned against his Keyblade for support.

"I may not have memories or a heart, but I know what I feel. And that's all I need. I accept my feelings and I won't have you or anyone else tell me what they are!"

Saïx just barely managed to block a hit. Roxas had come flying at him, hitting hard enough for Saïx's knees to buckle slightly.

"Why do you persist? You're alone, Roxas. Xion left you for dead and you can't trust Axel."

"Because we made a promise!" Roxas said angrily. "We're going to the beach!"

There was suddenly a blinding light. The Keyblade transformed before them both with a shrilling sound that filled the empty lobby and paralyzed Saïx as Roxas saw his chance and lifted the Keyblade to land one hit while he still could.

The Keyblade tore through the claymore as if the claymore had been made of dirt. The searing light radiating from the Keyblade burned through the fabric of Saïx's coat when it hit him on the shoulder. His collarbone snapped. The burn expanded and made it feel as if his skin had caught fire.

Saïx fell onto his knees. He put his hand over his wound instinctively, fearing that Isa would pour out of it.

"You'll regret this," he breathed. "You have nowhere to go but to the puppet that'll send you to your death."

"That's fine with me," Roxas said. His anger seemed to wash off at seeing Saïx beaten and firing shots in the dark when he couldn't admit defeat. "At least your plans will be ruined."

Roxas walked past him, completely unafraid. The dark clouds rumbled with the threat of rain, but Roxas continued forward, walking out through the main entrance to a freedom that would cost Saïx his chance of regaining his heart and life.

Saïx wanted to get up and continue the fight. This couldn't be the end of it. He couldn't be this weak after all of these years.

"We're stronger than this," he mumbled and tried to get up, but he caught a glimpse of his shattered claymore on the floor.

The burning on his shoulder started to spread like wildfire, causing cracks throughout him that grew to rifts, and before he knew it, he was shattering into pieces next to his claymore until Isa was forced out of deep slumber where had been wrapped, not only in darkness, but in layers of suffocating anger.


	10. Found And Lost

Something had gone.

Something had disappeared from under their noses, but no one knew what that something was.

Isa vaguely remembered standing by Axel at the entrance of Oblivion, knowing that Axel had fought to keep something dear to him near only to have it taken right out of his hands. The absence of Number Thirteen led Isa to believe that that something was Roxas. The silence in the city and in the long blank hallways of Oblivion made him think that their plans had been destroyed and that they were supposed to regroup to find a new solution.

But how long had it taken to near completion on this plan?

Eternities.

Isa was certain that Axel had left as soon as he had come to. Roxas couldn't be that far away, and regardless of their differences, Roxas was going to need guidance and a shield. Axel would undoubtedly do and be both. The plan of outsmarting Xemnas and finding out his true intentions had been put aside by Axel a long time ago. It wasn't a reason for Axel to stay.

The rain was falling hard against the window that was hidden behind the black leather couches. The Shadows made the small amount of light coming in through Isa's window flicker as they moved across the brightly colored windows of the buildings in the vicinity.

Isa was sitting against a wall, his knees close to his chest. He was dressed in his usual evening clothes. The silent cactus to his right had a face now; an illustration that Saïx had torn from an old book and pinned on the cactus. The theory was that it would become more talkative now that it had a face to smile with, but it turned out that the cactus just wasn't a good conversation partner.

Isa nudged one of the larger bruises on his left arm with his fingers and rested his forehead against one of his knees. Roxas had hit him right through his shoulder when the Keyblade transformed. It had shattered Isa's weapon first and shocked him out of the comforting trance of rage. There had been a bright flash. The Keyblade had revealed the light in Roxas to protect him, and in the process it had left a mark on Isa's shoulder.

Isa blinked slowly, resting his hand on top of his new mark.

"Saïx...let's give up." Isa stared right ahead and sighed softly. "I don't feel like fighting anymore."

What did it mean to give up? Isa thought that maybe he'd be turned into a Dusk first. His everyday tasks would essentially be the same with the exception that he wouldn't have a sense of self. He'd be nothing but an impulse of nerves, easily defeated by anyone who'd fight him and just as ignored as he was now. Xigbar had said once that Saïx's giants could eradicate him if he was turned into a Dusk, and it sounded so much better than having to deal with the idea of having to start over when he just wanted it all to end.

There was a knock on the door.

Isa looked up at the door, thinking that he had imagined it, but there was another knock, more fervent than the first.

He got up onto his feet and walked over to the door slowly before he reached for the doorknob. Good things had rarely come out of opening doors, but how much worse could things get now?

Axel stood on the other side. He was soaked with rain. His breathing was shallow, as if there was a lump in his throat, threatening to make his eyes water and defy one of the fundamental laws that came with being one without a heart. There was a desperate look in his eyes, and the clench of his jaw made Isa mistake it for anger. Isa stepped back with a gulp, ready to feel Axel's hands violently clench around the faintly bloodied front of his white tank top as he was shoved up against the nearest wall, but it never came.

Axel ran his arms around Isa, one over his shoulders, the other around his waist, and pulled him in close. Isa tensed and let out a small gasp as Axel buried his face into the nape of Isa's neck to hide a sob. His shoulders trembled even though he tried to hold back. He cried like a lost child, desperate for comfort. Isa slowly ran his arms around Axel too, scared of what would happen when he did, and intrigued by the sudden scent of autumn that filled the room.

"I don't know what to do," Axel said after a moment, his voice caught in a sob. He held onto Isa as if Isa was his only salvation.

"...I know a spell that'll take your sadness away..."

Isa stood still. He waited for Axel to break the embrace and stand back.

Once Isa sat back down onto the floor, Axel followed and sat down in front of him, wiping the remaining tears off his face with the back of his sleeve. Isa took the pen that Saïx used to leave him messages and to write journal entries. He had to look at a spot by Axel to work up the courage to look at him after years of telling himself not to. It never occurred to him that he would have to maybe touch Axel's face, or that he would have to come closer than he was comfortable with to draw the tears properly.

Isa gripped the pen by its end and pushed himself as close as he felt that he could manage. The main lines would end up shaky, but it was better than nothing. Isa drew triangular shaped tears, one under each eye as he mumbled an ancient spell in hopes that it would help Axel, like it once had helped Lea.

"How do you feel?"

"Like shit." Axel smiled miserably and looked down onto his hands to pull at the finger ends of his gloves.

"Maybe you should ask Xaldin for help," Isa said thoughtfully as he pulled his knees closer to his chest again. It was easier to look away like this, and he could hide behind the only armor he had at his disposal.

The silence stretched between them. Axel would leave soon enough. Isa had failed to fill the function that had brought Axel here in the first place. He wished he could take this opportunity to ask Axel what sea salt ice cream tasted like and what it was like to be in a world where it didn't rain constantly, but that would be having a conversation without purpose, and if Isa had learned anything, it was that people rarely had conversations with him unless there was a purpose.

When Axel brushed his fingers against Isa's cheek gently, Isa was certain that he had fallen asleep and that the lingering scent of autumn was the cause of a dream he hadn't been able to see in years. His breath hitched in his throat at the vivid sensation of warmth and the gentleness behind the touch. He was barely given the time to wish for the dream to go on for a little longer when his eyes fluttered open.

The dream had only lasted for a second, long enough to remind him of what he wanted, but could never have. He lowered his knees, ready to get up to find Xigbar and ask to be eliminated.

"Hey," Isa heard Axel say in a low whisper. Axel tilted Isa's head upward slightly, letting his thumb rest by the side of Isa's mouth. "Can I kiss you?"

"Kiss...?" Isa could barely hear himself think with the loud and irregular thumps in his chest. He blinked to see if he'd wake up, but even when his sight blurred, he could still feel the warmth of Axel's hand on his cheek.

The second question that followed was lost against Axel's lips. Isa shivered, frightened by the sensation. He thought of pushing Axel away, but his hand held onto the front of Axel's black coat, and as Axel pulled away from the soft kiss, Isa melted against the gentle touch of Axel's hand again.

"One more," Axel mumbled in what seemed like a question, but became a statement as he kissed Isa again and again until Isa couldn't tell the kisses apart.

He was lightheaded in a way that he could only remember associating with a punch to the head, but without the ringing pain in his ears and the two healing spells that it would take to stop seeing double. Isa hadn't known how cold he had been until Axel's warm hands roamed on his skin and guided him closer. Axel was everywhere all at once. He was like every raindrop in a downpour, seemingly harmless but with the power to break Isa into dust, and Isa was petrified.

"Axel...no..." Isa managed to push Axel away slightly, enough for Axel to stop and realize that Isa was trembling. "You should go. I have things to tend to...and, you should go." Isa tried to sound like he usually did, but his conflicting thoughts were revealed in his shaky voice. The strong yearning to be seen and be touched coupled with Axel's distraught expression made Isa certain that he would give in if Axel stayed.

"I won't hurt you." Axel ran his arms around Isa again, embracing him tightly when it seemed like Isa would run away. "I won't hurt you, I promise. I won't leave. It's you and me against the world, remember? We're stuck together." He placed a soft kiss at the nape of Isa's neck to hide his voice breaking, and after he added in a whisper, "I promise."

It was difficult to breathe through the strange and foreign sensation in his chest. It wasn't dark like the weight he was used to, it was light and warm. _You and me against the world_, it had a nice ring to it. Axel had Lea's ability of saying things that could brighten up his world. Isa knew that it was nothing but empty words put together to sugarcoat the reality of this. Axel had been left with a void and he wanted to mend it in whichever way he could. Isa was convenient. This wasn't about making peace or mending the relationship they once had had, and it was all fine with Isa as long Axel didn't let him believe any different.

"Okay," Isa said finally. He tugged at the hair on Axel's neck gently to have Axel face him.

"Okay," Axel agreed with a shaky breath. He brushed a stray hair behind Isa's ear and leaned in for a kiss.

Time should have broken into fragments. He shouldn't have been able to pinpoint the moment he heedlessly caved in for long suppressed desires or how labored his breathing became once he cautiously trailed his fingers down Axel's chest, but he saw and felt everything as it happened. Isa was mesmerized to see his hands being guided further down, pressed flat against Axel when Isa was certain that they both knew that his touches were poisonous.

The lightning lit up the room momentarily through the cracks between the couches. The dark rumblings of thunder fused with needy moans, and the steady rain silenced the stubborn doubts that survived the burning sensation of having someone so close.

Axel whispered something to Isa as he laid down on top of him. Isa didn't know what to say. He couldn't hear over the white noise and the dull beating in his ears.

"...too close," Isa said in a murmur and pushed at Axel weakly. The beating inside Axel's chest vibrated through them both with the certitude of a heart and not with the irregular drubbings of a caged kangaroo. It was the source of the white noise and it opened way for a suffocating heat that made Isa's toes curl and the small of his back arch from the cold floor underneath.

The truth of what he was to Axel was lost in the feverish haze caused by his own pandemonium of emotions. He had never been good at telling dreams from reality, and the temptation of making up a story of his own was too tempting to resist when he was convinced that this was going to be the last thing he ever did.

**~o~**

Everything was the same in the morning; the same but different. Isa had woken up to the sight of Axel sleeping soundly next to him despite the floor being cold and uncomfortable. Their clothes lay in piles around them. Most of them were Axel's. He had only been here for a few hours, long enough to lay claim on the space that Isa had thought of as his. There was an unsettling familiarity in it all; the clothes and the way Axel made it seem comfortable to sleep in a place that had taken Isa a long time to get used to. Axel made a home out of Isa's hiding place, and it led Isa's thoughts to what he knew about red threads and soul mates; soul mates would always find each other because they hid in the same places.

There had been a time he'd find joy in that. He knew better now.

It was still raining outside. Isa sat up slowly and listened to the raindrops patter against the windows. A part of him was afraid that Axel would disappear into thin air and reveal the severe decadence of Isa's mind. Another part of him didn't mind if Axel was a simple projection, that same part urged Isa to reach out and touch Axel if only to see what his mind was capable of doing with the memories he had left.

Isa stared ahead stubbornly. None of this was meant to happen anyway. He wasn't supposed to be here for this. Isa didn't wake up in the mornings. This was Saïx's shift.

They had both caused a mess yesterday. Roxas had escaped through the front door with the second in command on watch duty. Isa knew what the punishment was for failing a high priority mission, and it wasn't something he wanted to relive any time soon.

Isa glanced to his side when Axel rolled over onto his back with a small mumble. The tears that Isa had drawn were streaks of faint purple on Axel's cheeks. Isa closed one eye and raised one finger close to his face, right above where he could see the streaks. He wiggled his finger back and forth and wiped the remains of the tears away from where he sat.

Axel's cheeks gave a sparkle, and Isa had to put his hands over his mouth to muffle a chuckle that escaped him when Axel moved again at the sound of the sparkle on his cheek.

That was weird, Isa thought, his hands still over his mouth. He didn't feel like he was ready to be chuckling or do anything else that could be considered as symptoms of happiness. He wanted to be upset, angry, sad even. His demise could be near, and though he had wished for it all to end last night, it seemed too sudden when he thought about it now.

Isa got up onto his feet with a wince. He was sore. It didn't take much thought to figure out why, and he thought that he'd be annoyed by it, but by the time he stood in front of the mirror in his bathroom with the white tile, he had to squish his cheeks together to not look like he was smiling.

"Stop it," he mumbled and looked himself right in the eye with a bad attempt at a scowl. "We haven't fixed anything. We've just made things worse. Axel will leave, and we'll go on as usual. Understood?"

He paused. There was almost always a voice that replied to his queries, at least when it seemed like he wasn't in control of his actions. Isa was waiting for Saïx to say something, maybe Saïx was smiling to unsettle Isa, as revenge for all the mornings he had spent taking off the multitudes of band-aids.

When nothing came, Isa let go of the hold he had on his cheeks. He wasn't smiling anymore, but there was definitely something strange about his face.

Isa dressed slowly, avoiding his reflection in the mirror. It wasn't safe to get used to what he saw. He preferred his reflection when it was distorted with bruises. It was a different face that he saw every time he had the misfortune to look himself in the mirror − the face he saw now seemed innocent; free of fault when he knew that he was anything but.

Once he was ready, he stopped by the door. He lost count of the time he stared at the door knob. How long could it take for Axel to wake up, realize his mistake, get dressed and leave?

Isa counted to ten, his hand on the door knob.

_Eight, nine, ten._

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he started to count again.

_Knock, knock._

Isa held back a yelp and let go of the door knob as if it had burned through his glove.

"Hey, you alright in there?" Axel asked from the other side of the door.

"Yeah...I'm, fine," Isa said and had to keep himself from asking if there was anything wrong with Axel.

"We better hurry unless we wanna be late. Breakfast's ready."

Isa stepped out reluctantly. Axel had a deadline to meet. Isa could hear a clock count down the seconds for that deadline and knowing what it was for made him anxious. If Axel left before the sound of the alarm, Isa would regard this, Axel's promise, as sweet nothings whispered by the ghosts caught in eternal limbo in the foam of the waves crashing against the brink of Isa's mind. It was the favorable option for the both of them. If Axel stayed, Isa would end up believing in the promise given to him last night. The hope would awaken his will to move forward and fight, all the while knowing that he was too weak to protect Axel without his armor.

"There wasn't much in the fridge, so it's just an omelet with whatever I came across. Except bananas."

Axel was rummaging for two cups in the nearly empty cupboards when Isa walked up to the kitchen island and sat down on the barstool. The omelet was on the only served plate. Isa had a fork and Axel had a spoon. In the amount of time Axel had been in Isa's kitchen, he had found more things than Isa had found in years.

"I only found one bag of tea, so we'll have to split. Dig in." Axel sat down on his side of the kitchen island. He gave Isa a cup of tea and took the teabag out to put it in his own cup. "I'm pretty sure this is a saucer," Axel said and gave his cup a second glance before he put it down to reach for his spoon.

_Don't do this._

"Mmm, it's not half bad. Have some. It won't look good if we're late today. I'm sure the boss will have lots to say, or maybe, hopefully, he'll scold me through you. You wouldn't know anything about it yet?"

"No."

Axel looked out of place in Isa's room. The dark color of his furniture clashed with Axel's red hair and pale skin. Axel's voice filled the empty spaces with hazy memories, his warmth melted the frost from the surfaces, and Isa wanted none of it. Axel was undoing years of adjustments with every passing minute. Isa had never liked Axel's tired and bored way of talking to him, but it was what he knew. It wasn't this. Isa had only ever heard him speak casually like this with someone else, and always at a distance through layers of dark blankets that kept him from wondering what it would be like to have casual conversations with someone who didn't have a deep-rooted despise for him.

"Well, if worse comes to worst, at least we had a happy ending." Axel laughed bitterly and hurried to have another bite of the omelet.

"I might get punished too," Isa said calmly. He wasn't sure how that could be a comfort, but it was how he meant it to be perceived as, as a comfort.

"You? What for?"

"I failed an important mission."

Axel smiled knowingly. "Guess we got water over our heads yesterday. Since we're both in big trouble, we better enjoy what could very well be our last meal."

Isa took a small piece of the omelet and brought it to his mouth slowly as he watched Axel stuff his face. Axel's cheeks were round with omelet, and while he chewed he rubbed his forehead with a tired look on his face.

"You eat like a pig," Isa commented and reached his fork to the plate.

Axel looked up at Isa, his eyes wide at what he clearly thought was an outlandish comment. He held a finger up to save his turn to speak, but there was a whole lot of egg in his mouth to work through. It seemed like the beginning of a cute squabble, and Isa was having trouble holding back a smile when Axel struggled to keep an annoyed look on his face.

"Takes one to know one," was Axel's comeback once he finally could talk without dispersing egg everywhere.

Isa was certain that if they had been in another time and in another place, he'd have something else to add. In this time and place, he preferred to express himself in silence to not fall deeper into what had to be an illusion.

"Have you ever...thought about escaping? Hypothetically speaking, that is." Axel seemed surprised by the question that came out of his own mouth. He looked down quickly and tensed as he waited for Isa to reply.

"Escape?"

"Yeah, you know, just open a portal and go. Everything else be damned." Axel smiled nervously.

"I can't escape," Isa said thoughtfully and paused when Axel's expression darkened at Isa's answer.

"Why not?"

"It's raining."

Axel looked at Isa as if he wanted to ask about something that could possibly explain Isa's reason for not leaving, but instead he decided to take it as a mockery of his question. It was a ridiculous thought to think that the Organization's second in command would _escape_ when everything he needed was right here. The question didn't seem hypothetical in the light of Axel's reaction of silence and a gloomy look. It had been a proposition in disguise that Isa had picked up on, and he thought that his reason for staying was, in all fairness, understandable.

**~o~**

The strangeness seemed to be airborne today. It crept around every nook and corner in the world without colors and contaminated every breathing creature in sight, even Xemnas and Xigbar seemed to have been caught in the ever-growing cloud that carried the strangeness around.

Both Axel and Isa had been punished, just not in the traditional sense that Isa had come to associate with his superior.

"How long does this take?" Axel asked as he flopped onto one of the white couches in the lounge.

Axel was grounded until further notice. That was his punishment. The circumstances of Roxas's disappearance were unclear. There were a lot of things that needed an explanation, and both Xemnas and Xigbar knew that Axel couldn't possibly explain all of them. While a new plan was worked on, it was decided that it was best to keep Axel near, in case he decided to escape with the Organization's secrets.

Isa had been put in charge of overseeing Axel. That was his punishment. It was better than the rain in one sense, in every other sense it was just as unsettling and confusing. He had hoped to have some time to build barriers while he waited for Saïx to come back, but being on watch duty meant spending long hours in Axel's company.

"We have to wait for the others to come back."

"And how long does it take?" Axel repeated the question. He had barely been through two hours of grounding and he was restless already.

"Three hours, at the most. There weren't any difficult missions handed out today. It's mostly to keep everyone busy."

"Three hours, huh?" Axel rose to his feet and gave the room a quick look around. "Does that mean that there's no one here but us? Not even the boss?"

Isa watched Axel approach him slowly, as if every move forward was a silent request for permission to invade Isa's bubble of privacy. Isa thought that maybe he should move away or do something to break the sudden atmosphere in the room that he remembered from last night, but by the time he thought he had made a decision, Axel had closed the distance between them by pulling Isa in closer with a gentle tug of the side of his black cloak. Axel's breath was warm against Isa's neck. It sent chills down Isa's spine and blocked almost all rational thought.

Isa crossed his arms absentmindedly, as a reflex to not let Axel in too close, even though the small and gentle nibbling at the base of his neck had him closing his eyes and holding his breath at the exhilarating feeling of being touched.

"Not even the boss," Isa replied breathlessly.

"Where is he at this time of day? He doesn't do missions, does he?"

Isa shook his head, feeling the notepad slip from his weakening grip on it. "Hollow Bastion."

"Let's leave for a while then. No one will notice." Axel reached for Isa's hand and twined their fingers together.

Normally, Isa wouldn't have left his spot until everyone was back, not unless he had other orders. Axel made it easy to walk away from what had become a morning routine. He followed without protest when Axel led him out of the lounge and into what he later discovered was his office.

The hours that usually seemed endless were suddenly cut into a fraction of what they had been. There wasn't enough time in the day to do what had to be done when Isa was distracted by Axel's urges that emerged at the strangest of times and places. So far, no one seemed to have noticed, not even Xigbar. If he knew, he didn't show it.

At the third day, there had been a break in Isa's watch duty. He had been called for a meeting with Xemnas and Xigbar. There had been a change of plans. Roxas had been taken by Ansem the Wise, a man whose name didn't mean much to Isa, but seemed to amuse the other two. Isa's new mission was to research the old computer programs that Ansem had created in order to find where Ansem had hidden Roxas away.

It was a top secret mission, but he was going to need help to accomplish it.

Isa hurried to the library. It was a place that had usually been visited by Doctor Vexen and his apprentice whose face was just a dim fog in Isa's mind. Isa was the only one who spent any time there nowadays. It was his second office and where he did most of the research that needed to be done before assigning bigger missions to any of the employees.

Axel was waiting for him today.

Isa walked into the library quietly, but the sound of the door sliding closed gave his presence away. He heard Axel push the chair away from the desk and stand up at the sound. Isa held back a smile and walked over to one of the large bookcases to hide behind before Axel made it around the corner.

"Saïx?"

It was a childish game to hide away, and the excitement he felt at hearing Axel's approaching steps was just as childish, but a strange sense of happiness washed over him and made him hold his hands above where his heart had been to calm its phantom beating as he tried to make himself smaller to not be found.

When Axel caught Isa by his wrist, he gently pressed Isa against the bookcase behind him with a smile that was nothing like Isa had seen up until now.

"There you are," Axel said in a whisper and placed a soft kiss at the side of Isa's mouth.

Isa's breath hitched in his throat like it had done so many times over these past few days. There was a strange thump in his chest, as if something had come to life without Isa noticing until this very moment. He closed his eyes briefly and saw his grid flash for a brief moment. It was torn, the ends of the few light strings were frayed and short-circuited, but the dull thump brought the strings light. A small part that had been in the dark for ages, flickered alight and sent a shiver down Isa's spine.

"You found me," Isa breathed. He smiled. He stroked Axel's cheeks with his fingers and gulped slightly as he looked Axel in the eye, mesmerized by the intense green. There was suddenly an overwhelming amount of things he wanted to say; _I've missed you. Don't leave me again. I'll save you. I love you. I'm sorry. _But he had barely gotten used to the small and tender beating inside of his chest, and all he got out was a shaky sigh. Instead, he leaned in close and kissed Axel, trembling with emotions he held back as an instinct.

Neither of them could tell how long they stood there, only that the soft tune from the clock on the wall by the door reminded them that there was work that needed to be done.

The books that Ansem the Wise had written on his computer programs were thick, and there were at least four books on it. It felt strangely familiar to simply open the book and start reading while he held a pen against his notepad by the book, ready to make notes of everything that could be of importance. Axel had taken out a few books of his own, but he didn't seem to be that interested in them at first, not until Isa told him what he was doing.

"It's dinner time at the canteen. You coming?" Axel closed his book shut and put it in the pile to his left after a few hours of researching.

"No...I'm gonna finish up here," Isa said slowly while he made yet another note, not taking his eyes off the book he was reading.

"You eat, don't you?"

The concern in Axel's voice made Isa look up at last. "Yeah, I eat."

"When?"

"When I get hungry."

"And when's that?"

"Soon...ish."

Axel leaned against the desk, narrowing his eyes at Isa. "What will you eat? You haven't asked me to bring you anything."

Isa shuffled his feet under the desk nervously. The grip he had on his pen grew tighter, and he looked away from Axel as he sat up straight with a sigh.

"I eat...bananas..." His voice faded into a mumble mid-sentence, and he hoped that Axel hadn't heard the last part.

"Right, yeah...I've noticed." Axel fell into silence. Isa was certain that he was looking at him with that expression of disbelief and misplaced amusement that made Isa feel ridiculed.

"Why?" Axel asked at last.

"It's stupid, and it doesn't matter."

It suddenly felt like the zipper of his black coat was too high up on his throat and pressing down in a way that made it difficult to breathe properly. Things had been going great so far. He didn't want it to have it ruined by this.

"Tell me anyway."

"It's..." Isa gulped. "It's to, um, to make it stop raining."

Axel nodded slowly. "How's that working out?"

"I don't know. The spell is meant for three...I don't know how many I have to eat before it stops raining." It even sounded weird in _his_ ears when he said it out loud. Anyone would think that he had lost his mind. His credibility and worth was already below subzero. It wasn't fair to expect Axel to put his life in the hands of a possible lunatic whose plans might be as helpful as eating bananas to stop the rain from falling.

"You brought any?"

"Any what?"

"Bananas."

"...yeah?"

"Hand me one."

Isa looked up at Axel again. He didn't look like he was making fun of him. "You don't have to," Isa said, his voice slightly hoarse when he had to speak through the lump forming in his throat.

"It's fine. Hand me one." Axel smiled and reached his hand out.

Isa pulled out a bunch of bananas from the top drawer and gave Axel one. Isa's eyes were wide, and he seemed to want to say something, but nothing would come out.

"I don't have to do any initiation rite before getting in on it, right?"

Isa shook his head. He decided that he'd eat too, if only to avoid having that lump in his throat grow any bigger and suffocate him.

Isa's goal of ever coming past the rain had recently seemed like something impossible. His idea of not giving up had been to continue with the ritual, even though he believed that nothing would come out of it. Maybe his goal was still beyond his reach, but at least he wasn't fighting alone anymore.

"Axel?"

"Mm?" Axel laid slouched over the desk, head supported by his hand as he skimmed through one of the books from his right pile.

"I want to see the clock tower."

Axel tensed slightly, but quickly regained his composure.

"What clock tower?"

"The one in Twilight Town. I want to see the view from there."

"Sure..." Axel said. He had to sit up straight to get a sigh out, but he quickly turned it into a smile when he looked back at Isa. "As soon as Xemnas ungrounds me, we'll go."

Isa turned his attention back to his notes, a small smile playing on his lips for the rest of the evening. He would find a way to shorten Axel's punishment. His thoughts raced as he laid out a plan of how he would execute the mission. By the time he woke up the next morning, his legs tangled with Axel's, he had already worked it all out.

**~o~**

Xemnas furrowed his brow slightly. He rested his head against his hand where he sat on his armchair. Isa had just explained his plan and his conclusions after reading Ansem the Wise's research. He was halfway through the programming on the main computer. He would need the evening to finish it and another couple of hours to locate Roxas. It had all sounded good until Isa told them of the second part of his plan.

"Is it wise to let Axel out so soon?" It had been Xemnas's first question. He didn't look nor sound concerned. He glanced over at Xigbar to get a second opinion and got a shrug and an amused smile.

"Ansem has hidden Roxas in a virtual world. He has most likely found a way to tamper with Roxas's memories to have him return to Sora. We need someone who can pull him out of it, and convince him that his place is here with the Organization. Roxas was closest to Axel. It would be foolish not to make use of that when time is running out."

"And you trust Axel to carry out this mission?" Xigbar asked.

"Axel is loyal to the Organization. We share the same goals, and he knows that we need a Keyblade-wielder to carry through with our plans. The whole process will be controlled. Axel will be imported into the virtual world where he can make contact with Roxas and bring him out of the program and back here. With the right timing, Ansem won't even notice that we've hacked the program until it's too late. I'll be overseeing the mission closely."

"I'm sure you will, Chuckles."

"When will you carry through with the mission?" Xemnas asked.

"First thing tomorrow morning. I'll have the preparations done by the end of today."

"Keep us informed." Xemnas said and only had to shoot Xigbar a glare when it seemed like he wanted to add an upsetting comment. "Dismissed."

**~o~**

Isa thought that Axel would prefer doing other tasks, like cleaning around the office, rather than being locked up in the room with the main computer and watch Isa work, but he chose to sit right behind Isa, and he watched the large screens displaying numbers and letters that didn't make much sense to him.

The program was taking shape. By late afternoon, Isa was able to run the first search without being immediately thrown out of the virtual world. He sent in Dusks as tests to make sure the system was working properly. Axel could tell that they were nearing completion when they could see the Dusks as white spots on the map, moving around in the city that was an exact replica of Twilight Town.

"Is Roxas any of those white spots?" Axel asked, leaning in from behind where he sat on a plastic chair.

"No. He'll be in a different color. The white spots are Dusks. Ansem did a good job on the firewalls. The Dusks keep getting thrown out. You have to be very careful tomorrow. Don't draw any attention to yourself, or you'll be tossed out."

"Is that dangerous?"

"Dangerous in the sense that Ansem will find out that we're onto him and he might speed up the process of eliminating Roxas."

Axel frowned as he watched the white spots vanish on the screen. He took a deep breath and gave a quick and determinate nod.

"So tomorrow morning?" Axel put his hands behind the back of his head and leaned against the chair. "What's gonna happen to Roxas when I bring him back here?"

"Nothing."

"We'll just go back to business as usual? I thought they'd want to punish him...I thought that, you'd want that..." Axel trailed off, uncertain whether he should be reminding Isa of past events. Axel had seen the mark on Isa's shoulder. He had no intention of asking Isa about it. It was just easier to assume that Isa had fought against Roxas and learned first hand of the power that the Keyblade held.

"He'll just go back to doing missions," Isa said and turned all of his attention back to the computer. He knew that he could be vengeful, but he always assumed that he kept it well hidden in the depths of his mind where he granted himself justice. Axel's suspicions didn't hurt as much as they would have done before, not because he didn't care, but because he knew that he had, in a sense, won.

Axel hadn't left when he could. He had decided to stay despite everything that had happened. Despite the string of fate tying Axel to someone else, he had stayed with Isa to mend their broken and fragile bonds that had been forged by their own will.

**~ o~**

First attempt of bringing Roxas back hadn't gone as planned. Axel had been detected by Ansem and the program had thrown Axel out, nearly crashing and revealing the structures of the fake world to Roxas. Axel had asked for a moment to be by himself after that. He hadn't waited for a reply, he had just walked out of the room and closed the door behind himself.

Isa couldn't go after him. He had to stay to improve the program and make sure that it was ready for a second attempt.

When the second attempt failed too, and Axel came back, jaws clenched, Isa thought that maybe it was better to give up, or maybe send someone else. Roxas didn't have to come back because he wanted to, he could be forced back here, and maybe that's why Axel failed with the mission; there was an uncertainty in him that kept him from going all out.

"I think it's better if I send someone else." It was the first thing Isa said when Axel walked back into the computer room the next day.

It seemed that Axel had been preparing himself. He walked in, his eyes set on the machine he had to step into to get into the virtual Twilight Town. The new turn of events gave him a stern look in his eyes and he pulled his gloves higher up with a quick glance at the floor.

"I'll do it."

"You don't have to. I'll send Xaldin. Time is running out and we'll take him back whether he likes it or not. I'll send for you when everything's settled, but for now, it might be better if you do something else. There are a few missions that need to be taken care of in Halloween Town−"

"Saïx, I'm telling you that I'll do it. No one here knows Twilight Town like I do. Xaldin's never set foot there. He's the size of a goddamn building, he'll be detected before he materializes. Roxas will come around, so let me finish this."

"If he doesn't come around, you'll have to use force."

"I know." Axel sighed and looked away again, scratching the back of his neck in frustration. "I know. And I will. You trust me, don't you?"

Isa gave him a quick nod as a reply. He still had doubts about letting Axel follow through with the mission. There was a desperation in his eyes that reminded Isa of that rainy night not so long ago. Axel wasn't thinking rationally, he was upset and itching to do something about a situation he wanted out of.

"Why are you so upset about this?" Isa asked.

"I'm not..."

"Don't lie."

"...he doesn't remember me." Axel chuckled and smiled bitterly. "At all. It's just gone. I thought that if I could somehow find the right question to ask to trigger the memories, it would come back. He'd come back. I thought that maybe they were still in there somewhere, but it's clear in the way he looks at me. I'm gone. And I just...am I that easy to forget?"

"I won't forget you."

Isa knew that it wasn't enough. It was a drop in a vast ocean, but maybe Axel could let it be enough just for now to soothe some of the ache that he had been caused.

Axel smiled softly and sighed again. "Do I have your permission to proceed?"

"Yes."

As the beams of the machine transferred Axel into Twilight Town, Isa wondered if he had made the right decision. There was something in the air that made him feel anxious, as if there was a storm brewing with a threatening rumble that promised mayhem and destruction.

The look in Axel's eyes when he came back, became the thunder, his quick steps as he stormed out of the room became the lightning, and his silence became the never-ending rain that would one day push Isa off the edge of sanity.


	11. The Torn Half

It had been a little over a week since the Organization's original plans had failed. Isa had thought of it as his end. Waking up with Axel beside him made those thoughts seem like distant memories of nightmares best left forgotten.

Axel was paler than Isa. His red hair intensified in color when Isa focused his gaze on Axel's neck, right where his hairline met milky skin. Isa could see the outlines of Axel's ribs on his back when he inhaled, and he watched them slowly disappear as he exhaled. Axel was skinnier than him. Isa could count the vertebrae from the top of Axel's spine down to the middle of his back where he had to run a finger to keep counting until they became visible again at his lower back. He ran his fingers further down and lingered right above the dimples, wishing that he had the courage to kiss down the trail he made with his fingers. His hand brushed against the white covers that covered them both up to their hips, and he wondered if Axel was still asleep.

Isa didn't usually sleep in his bed. The scentless covers were easier to ignore when he pretended that this bedroom didn't exist, but he had been persuaded into using it again. Agreeing to it had granted him this sight that he eagerly soaked in. He moved in close enough to feel Axel's body heat but stayed far enough to not brush up against him.

Axel had been in a bad mood lately. He sighed a lot. Ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his eyes. His smile didn't quite reach his eyes, and he looked away from Isa far more often than Isa liked. Isa wasn't sure what to do about it.

The plan of getting Roxas back had failed, but according to their sources, the real Keyblade-wielder was killing Heartless fervently. Their plans were moving along in ways that were better than they could have imagined. They would soon get their hearts back. They wouldn't be confined to this colorless world and Fate would right her wrongs and have the Man on the Moon bind Isa and Lea together.

Isa tried to cheer Axel up by whispering things that had made Axel happy before; _I trust you. I'll always remember you. _But Axel's veil of sadness only seemed to be lifted whenever they laid tangled in bed. Isa's voice was only a comfort when he gasped for Axel through sobbing moans that he desperately tried to hold back as Axel buried his fingers into his hips in a bruising grip to angle him for every thrust. Isa's touches were only enough when his nails either dug into Axel's shoulders or arms as Isa arched his back with a shudder and let one last choked moan out.

It wasn't ideal. Isa wanted Axel to tell him what was weighing him down. Isa wanted to be Axel's support and protection, not just stress release. It was a vicious cycle that frightened Isa. The more Axel gave him the more he wanted, and the voice at the back of his head kept reminding him that he should be happy that Axel saw a function in him at all.

Isa closed his eyes. There was still time before they had to leave. He smiled. He had something that would make Axel happy again. It was something he had wanted to tell him the night before, but it had slipped his mind.

"Axel," Isa began softly, looking up at Axel's back as he heard Axel's breathing change from calm and soft breaths to a deep sigh and then nothing. "...I'd like to see the clock tower today."

Axel shifted in bed and sat up to look at Isa.

"I'm not grounded anymore?" His eyes were wide with surprise. Axel had been confined within this world for less than two weeks, but to him it seemed like it had been eternities even though he at least got to spend some time in the virtual Twilight Town.

Isa sat up and gave Axel a quick nod.

"I convinced Xemnas that you'd be of better use doing missions with the others."

"So I'll be going on a mission today? Outside?"

"Only in the morning. Don't loiter around after you've finished your work. We'll leave for Twilight Town as soon as you come back. That leaves us with an hour or so to watch the sun set." Isa leaned in for a quick kiss but stayed close when Axel brushed his hair back and tilted his head back up to leave a trail of soft kisses from his lips and down to his chin.

"And Xemnas is in Hollow Bastion?"

"He will be. Why?"

"Just wondering."

Axel smiled as he sat back. Isa frowned slightly at the sad look in Axel's eyes. It didn't seem like Axel would explain, but Isa wanted to know, and he reached for Axel's wrist and kept him from leaving the bed.

"We should get ready for work," Axel said and pulled his arm back slightly.

"Why are you sad? I thought you'd be happy to hear that your punishment has been lifted."

"I am. I am happy. Really." Axel sighed and looked down at the side of the bed before he could look back at Isa. He reached for Isa with his other hand, and with a gentle tug at the back of Isa's head, he brought Isa closer to run his arms around him. "I'm sorry, Isa. I tried. Whatever happens, know that I tried."

Isa's breath hitched in his throat at hearing Axel say his real name. At that moment, it was Lea holding him, sheltering Isa from the world around them, and Isa wanted to call out for him like he had done so many times before without any results. He wanted to say "I'm here. I'm here, Lea." but his throat seemed to have closed up with a thick lump that made his eyes water and sting with the saltiness of it.

Their eyes met when Axel pulled back slowly. He seemed to be searching for someone in Isa's eyes. His apology had been to someone else. To someone Axel thought he couldn't see or hear but that was sitting right there in front of him, caught in the violent torrents of cold water, screaming for rescue in a world where his voice couldn't travel far.

"Let's get ready for work. We have a busy day today."

Axel smiled again, but all Isa could see was the sadness in his eyes as another small voice in the back of Isa's head kept screaming for Lea to notice him; _I'm here._ _Why can't you see me?_

**~o~**

When the clock on the wall let out a soft tune to let everyone know that it was eight in evening, Isa crossed his arms, holding his notepad close to his chest. Almost everyone had reported back. Everyone but Axel.

Isa had thought of simply walking through a portal of darkness and see where he'd end up. He knew how to open one, but he had never used them himself. Saïx had, but Isa was afraid that the portals of darkness were like the rain. Maybe he had to be wearing an armor to last longer in darkness. Demyx had given him a strange look as he said that it was easy to use them. All you had to do was to think of the place where you wanted to go, but Isa was uncertain if it would work to just think "Take me to wherever Axel is."

He reached his hand out to see thorns of darkness play at his gloved fingertips as he prepared to open a portal of darkness to go to the world he had sent Axel to. Maybe he needed help. Easy missions could quickly turn into something unexpected and dangerous.

"Chuckles! Conference." Xigbar stood by the doorway at the other end of the room and stared at Isa with his one good eye.

"I'm not finished with work yet."

"Yeah, you are. Conference, now."

Isa didn't get to say anything else. In the blink of an eye, he had gone from standing in the lounge to sitting by the conference table in the room of mirrors. Xemnas was already there, waiting for his subordinates.

"Sir, I haven't collected all the mission reports yet. I'm still waiting for one more." Isa was quick to explain when Xemnas stared at him with the same strange amusement Isa had seen in Xigbar just seconds before.

"You'll have to do an awful lot of waiting, Saïx." Xemnas said.

"Ah, Chuckles, you have a knack for messing things up, don't ya?" Xigbar said with a smirk.

"What do you mean?" Isa's voice was steady, but his grip around his notepad tightened. He remembered a similar situation that had started off with a phrase like that. It made something turn in Isa's stomach, but he kept his calm and quickly glanced at Xemnas to try to figure out if maybe he should be afraid.

"Well," Xigbar began with a condescending tone. "It strikes me as a little weird that Axel would disappear from under our noses at the one time our surveillance is at its weakest. Is that something you let slip, Chuckles? What else did he find out about?"

"...disappeared?"

Xigbar laughed out loud at the sudden and subtle look of shock on Isa's face.

"That explains a lot. I was wondering why you two were suddenly joined at the hip. We already knew that you don't work well when Axel's hanging a carrot in front of you, but you've surpassed yourself this time, Chuckles." Xigbar laughed again.

"What do you mean disappeared?" Isa asked again, his voice stern to hide the growing panic inside. "You said that Axel had served his punishment and that it was alright to send him back on missions."

"_We_ didn't make him disappear." Xemnas said, unmoved by it all.

"That would be a little counterproductive on our part, considering how few of us there's left, don't you think?" Xigbar leaned forward in his seat. "No, Chuckles, by the looks of it, this is something much more fun. Axel disappeared out of own free will, and since we can't find him, he must've run as fast as his legs could carry him. That two-timing son of a gun had it all planed out. He used you to escape. And you can right me if I'm wrong, Chuckles, but I'm gonna bet that all he had to do was squeeze you right to have all the beans spilling everywhere."

"No...he, Axel went on a mission to Halloween Town. I think I must have miscalculated the amount of Heartless." Isa looked up at both Xemnas and Xigbar, ignoring the sudden sting in his chest as he felt black dust stir up and pounce against his rib cage. "This must be a mistake. I'll find him, and I'll bring him back."

"And you think you can waste everyone's time like that?" Xigbar asked, frowning with distaste.

"You said it yourself, Xigbar. There are very few of us left. I'll bring Axel back." Isa turned his attention to Xemnas. "Sir, I'll think of a plan. Please, entrust this to me."

"Very well. Don't let this interfere with anything else."

"I won't, sir."

Isa was out of the room of mirrors and in a long hallway in the blink of an eye. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls slowly, suctioned upward by the ceiling to reveal blank surfaces. Isa walked forward. This wasn't a place he recognized, but it wasn't the first time he had been pulled out of what he knew and into foreign places. It wasn't the first time he was left behind. It wasn't his first time alone, and yet, he felt a fracture grow across his chest with the threat of turning into a rift. It had happened before, but this time it wasn't his armor crumbling.

_We've been through this. Pull yourself together._

Moving forward had become a reflex. It wasn't an instinct for survival, it wasn't fear, it just was.

Isa wished for it to be no more. Only then would he stop moving forward without aim; only then could he stop long enough to dig into his chest and remove the insistent storm of black dust that was turning into an ocean of black waves crashing against the illusion of a heart with the gentle thumps.

He held a hand out against the wall to keep his balance. This wasn't like any other storm he had pulled through. It wasn't just grains cutting through his insides. It wasn't just pebbles trying to crush through his lungs and ribs. This storm had a target. It came with the comforting feeling Isa had come to relate with security blankets when a part of him was kept away from a reality only his armor could handle, and it came with excruciating pain as the waves crashed against the walls of the veins surrounding his chest and spread like a wildfire down his arms and legs.

"Have you thought of what you'll do when you get Axel back here?" Xigbar asked from down the hallway. "You think just bringing him back will keep him from escaping? You're not worth sticking around for."

Isa kept walking, but he wasn't fast enough to get away from Xigbar.

"What is it, Chuckles? Are you feeling a little under the weather?" Xigbar grinned. "What's making the kangaroo kick around in there, Chuckles? Is it because he used you or is it because he abandoned you without a second thought?"

Isa had his hands around Xigbar's neck faster than he thought he could react. He pushed Xigbar against the wall, hard enough for the impeccable blank surface to crack. The pained grunt from Xigbar made the black waves move easier through Isa's veins as he let out a breath of slight relief. He could feel his eyes sting, but he thought that maybe it was because he hadn't blinked in a while − not that he would anytime soon. He wanted to see his fingers sink into Xigbar's throat. He wanted to hear Xigbar's windpipe crush under his grip, and wipe that sneer off his face.

"That's right, Chuckles. Get angrier. Don't fight it. You'll feel better soon."

Xigbar managed to hit Isa at the side of his head with his elbow. Isa stumbled away, releasing his grip around Xigbar's throat. The raging storm blinded Isa for a short moment, but he quickly regained his composure just in time to jump away from the shots Xigbar fired at him from a distance.

"What did Axel promise this time that made you drop your guard? He promised you something, didn't he?" Xigbar laughed as he teleported away from Isa. "You must've known, Chuckles. He wasn't going to keep his promise to you. You're a disposable tool. You pulled him under and made his life hell. Who would want to be remembered by someone like you?"

Isa wanted it to be anger, he wanted it to be hate; but it was the hurt that stung in his fingertips that made his claymore materialize. He remembered the last time he had used his weapon, and he remembered it breaking and becoming one of the many things that had failed him when he needed protection.

"You're still hanging on, Chuckles. Just let go."

Isa swung his claymore, feeling like his skin was about to tear and release raw emotions that he wasn't ready to handle. His weapon caught in the wall. Isa used his momentum to jump forward and past Xigbar. The claymore was still caught in the wall, but as Isa hurried down the hall, it disappeared, leaving nothing but cracks in the blank surface.

The surroundings shifted around him. The blank hallway pulled back the wallpaper from above and used it to turn into the hallway Isa had only seen once before. The ping of the elevator at the end of the hallway summoned the familiar door to the closest thing to home. Isa stumbled into his room and pulled down the zipper of his black coat. He thought of rummaging the kitchen for a knife to cut off all the parts of him that were infected by the storm of black dust. He could see it in the veins on his arms and his legs.

It became a matter of now or never.

He was still in control.

He was still sane.

And it was his sanity that made him stop the sharp blade mere inches from his skin.

It wasn't survival instinct.

It was fear.

_What if I'm empty after all?_

"Saïx..." Isa sobbed. He was trembling, terrified by the sheer force of the storm that raged inside him with the threat of drowning him once and for all. "Please, Saïx...anyone...save me...please..."

His armor reached around him, locking their arms over Isa's chest. Isa stopped struggling, ready for the familiar feeling of being covered by dark blankets and being pulled into a place where he could sleep, but this was nothing like it. His armor put his hand over Isa's mouth and nose as the black waves washed over them, pulling them into strong currents.

_Hold your breath. Don't let the bubbles escape._

Isa did as he was told. He closed his eyes tightly when he could see the dark depths push toward the surface with thorns similar to those he had seen lick his hands whenever he summoned something. The thorns were around his ankles, trying to pull him down, but the currents were too strong, and they were swept away .

Isa felt his exterior melt. His skin was on fire, but he could only focus on holding his breath. The hold around him fell through and into him as he was caught in a cold torrent. Isa merged with his armor. The line he had drawn between himself and the fury Saïx had contained, was erased and molded into his new foundation. He had to open his eyes when his corneas radiated a searing light that threatened to burn his eyelids.

The chaotic darkness around him stopped swirling. It left a space of ocean between him and it. The currents faded. Isa was still holding his hand over his mouth and nose, and he let his hand fall to his side as he looked up toward the surface where he saw a whale swim past and take with it his last ounce of sympathy.

**~o~**

Saïx was kept under surveillance. His anger made him unstable, they said. He had to be taught ways of keeping it under wraps. Xigbar told him to pretend that it was all a charade; a practice before the real deal. "Save it up for the one battle that matters." Saïx didn't pay him much attention. He was settling into indifference to soothe the anger that bubbled underneath his skin like a constant reminder of the power he held. Hatred had filled his ribcage and kept the storm at bay, and to think that he had spent such a long time struggling against something that was strangely liberating.

He had caught glimpses of this state before. Most of the employees had, and it made them tread on eggshells around him now. They knew that if his restraint broke, he wouldn't stop until someone was dead.


	12. Landfill

Their new mission was to manipulate Sora into killing as many Heartless as possible. It proved to be an easy task, but even so, Xemnas insisted on taunting Sora. Maybe it was just something he wanted to do to pass the time, it didn't really matter to Saïx. It was just amusing to see the confused look on Sora's face and by extension, Roxas's too.

In Hollow Bastion, they appeared in group. Saïx was told to stay in the background in order to show them that he could control himself. The only thing Saïx struggled with, was understanding why Xemnas wanted to ease Sora into his games.

"Patience," Xigbar had said with a sneer. "It takes time to create a masterpiece."

Saïx snorted at the choice of words. There was nothing about Sora that could be called a masterpiece. He held the power to release hearts, to travel worlds, but he was completely oblivious to the powers he held. It made him weak.

As soon as Saïx had proven that he had no problem with self-control, he was given a mission; to find Axel and mess with the Keyblade-wielder's head. He had been told that the mission was top priority. He was no longer bound to the colorless world and could roam the realms as he pleased. They had looked at him for a reaction. He had accepted the mission with a quick nod and an obedient "Yes, sir."

The leads took him to Twilight Town. He had walked through the portal of darkness as if he had done it a million times before. It was as easy as he had been told it was. It worked faster than he thought it would, and it was slightly disappointing to think that the workings of the portals were much more interesting than the city he walked into. The colors were too bright, the buildings were strange and the smells were far too strong.

Saïx didn't spend much time looking around. He didn't see the sky shift in color as the sun started to set, and he didn't notice the clock tower in the background. He knew that Sora was near, and it was all he needed to summon his loyal Nobodies and have them attack Sora and his companions.

The second time he saw the confused look on Sora's face wasn't as amusing as the first time. Mentioning Axel to Sora didn't seem to move him in the least, and Saïx wondered what he could threaten to take away to have fear settle in the crevices of Sora's mind. Riku seemed to do the trick, and the trip to Twilight Town didn't seem as such a waste anymore when Sora gripped his Keyblade tightly and took a defensive stance.

_We know how to injure a heart._

The portal of darkness closed before Sora could come close enough, and Saïx felt himself smirk. What fun it would be to put everything he had learned about the fragility of the heart into practice.

**~o~**

In his search for Axel, Saïx came across a lot of spheres. It had been years since he last had collected them, and the habit of picking them up had him reach for them when he saw them appear. They melted in his gloved grip and sank into the ground. He knew that most of them were memories, but he couldn't bring himself to care about what happened to his memories when most of them were obscured by a thick fog that only allowed him to see glimpses of singing flowers and fire-breathing dragons.

The more spheres he destroyed, the easier it became to summon lesser Nobodies. It was as if he made room for the powers that were surging within him, and he knew that he would have use of those powers in the future.

That future proved to be closer than he could have hoped for.

He had been sent to Hollow Bastion. According to reports that he had read about himself, Hollow Bastion was what was left of a world that once had been his home. He had no recollection of it. All he knew was that it had been known as Radiant Garden, and that the name might be the reason he occasionally remembered singing flowers.

Saïx began summoning Heartless as soon as he got there, and he watched the citizens panic as their security system began to deteriorate further. There was a group of self-proclaimed protectors trying to fend off the Heartless from the city core. It was odd to witness them protect a world that was on the brink of destruction. It was a broken place, riddled with problems and dysfunctions that seemed to be beyond repair, but they patched and rebuilt until it broke again.

Their persistence made Saïx summon Heartless until he could hear their gnawing from beyond the city borders, and he watched them climb the mountain sides, devouring the remains of a home he didn't want to remember. He knew there would come a point when the self-proclaimed protectors would give up. They'd let the world crumble down on its own, and they'd find a new place to call home - unless Saïx made sure they died trying to protect this one.

Spotting weaknesses was easy. The importance of things and people led to rash decisions when their safety was threatened. Rash decisions left a stenchy trail of fear and brought the weaknesses to light. Saïx only had to make use of the weaknesses he found and wait for the other to make a stupid move.

It turned out that Axel was both rash and stupid when something he cared for was on the line. Saïx had seen that pattern before, but he had never seen it for what it was. He had been watching from behind muslin drapes and rationalized the behavior as something desirable, when in reality, it was nothing but debilitating.

Saïx had been on Axel's trail for a while, and thanks to Axel's stupidity and desperation, Saïx had someone dear to Sora captured. He was certain that the look of confusion on Sora's face that he had grown accustomed to, would turn into one of anger, hate, and most importantly, fear. Xigbar had said that there was nothing funnier than seeing the look of absolute fear in someone's eyes and know that you put it there.

Saïx wanted to give it a try.

A badly wounded Dusk appeared before Saïx to the echoing sound of the grand battle taking place at the outskirts of the city. Lesser Nobodies rarely went back to their summoner if they were close to death. Their shell wasn't made to live long after sustained injuries, but this was one Nobody, amongst many others that made an effort, because even with their small and limited minds, they could remember that Saïx was the one that made sure to feed them.

_Axel has been spotted near Sora._

Saïx walked past the Dusk, quickly glancing at the black liquid dripping from its limbs. Shadows were empty, Dusks were not. It wasn't difficult to cast a healing spell and rid the Dusk of its wounds. Saïx couldn't care less whether the Dusk lived or died, and even so, there was something beneath it all that made him reach his hand out and rest it on top of the Dusk's head. The healing spell was on the tip of his tongue, but it was so much easier to have the Dusk's shell disintegrate into black thorns and then have the wind take care of the rest.

If someone had had the decency of doing that to him before he grew into a grotesque monster, the Dusk might have stood a chance. It was Saïx's excuse. It made it easier to slip into what he was, and not struggle.

He opened a portal of darkness with the mere thought and walked in.

As soon as the portal of darkness cracked on the other side, Saïx could hear Axel. He could hear the strain in Axel's voice when Sora questioned his motives, Saïx could hear the guilt when Sora asked for Kairi, and he could hear Axel's fear of having to tell his best friend that he had lost one of the persons that mattered the most to him.

It was more emotion than Saïx could remember hearing in a conversation, and the only thing he could bring himself to feel at that moment was disgust and anticipation of what was to come; punishment.

"I've found you, Axel."

It was merely meant as a fact, like the ones he remembered writing and reading in one of his many diaries to keep track of each day, and yet there was a taunting quality to his statement that made Axel's eyes almost glow with fear when Saïx stepped out of the portal of darkness.

Saïx watched Axel disappear in a mist of dark thorns with a slight curious tilt of his head; where did Axel think he could hide when Saïx had been granted access to every world in existence? Did Axel think that Saïx would eventually give up to not waste more time? How foolish. Time was all he had.

Sora tried to run after Axel, but Saïx easily stopped him in his tracks by simply obstructing Sora's way by extending his arm.

"Don't worry. We'll make sure he gets punished."

"I don't care about any of that!" Sora was exasperated and he looked down onto the ground with a sad look on his face.

_What do you care about then? _

Saïx turned around, knowing that Sora would let it slip soon enough. He knew that look. It felt like it had been eternities since he had seen it reflected in the shiny surface of a heartless armor.

"Just let me into the realm of darkness, okay?"

"If it's Kairi you're worried about, don't. We're taking very good care of her."

"Take me to her."

"Is she that important to you?"

"Yeah. More than anything."

More than anything. What could it possibly mean to someone with such great powers at their disposal? What could Sora give up to show that he knew what "more than anything" was?

"Show me how important."

Sora's two loyal companions gasped in shock as Sora went down on one knee, then the other, until he was on all fours, bowing his head down with his forehead almost on the ground.

"Please."

It was a laughable attempt; pathetic and predictable. Pride was the one thing Sora thought counted as more than anything. It didn't occur to him to take her place, even as farce. Sora's value exceeded Kairi's. She was merely worth one small aspect of him, and Saïx would keep her locked up and away from everyone until Sora begged through suffocating sobs to see her, if only to assure himself that she was well.

"So you really do care about her?" Saïx asked as a taunt, but it went unnoticed in the favor of his final answer. "In that case, the answer is no."

"You rotten…!"

The look of sadness on Sora's face was replaced with one of anger. It happened so quickly. His sadness for the absence of his friend was easily overpowered by the despise he felt at having his request negated. Spoiled brat, Saïx thought with annoyance.

Sora's anger and hatred would work in their advantage. It would consume him while he released the hearts that would make the Moon and her servants whole again. Saïx knew that there would be a final act before their hearts returned, and that Sora's demise was center stage. It was almost a shame that Saïx wouldn't be the one to shove him off the edge when he had been working so hard to make all of this happen.

**~o~**

Saïx hadn't gone back to his room since he had been rescued by the darkness. It was a place he seemingly would rather forget existed. There were many places in Oblivion he would rather not go to. It wasn't because of an unsettling feeling that he managed to avoid those places. His mind simply did what it always had done; it built barriers and distorted his reality.

With his co-workers disappearing one by one, and the grand plan stuck in-between success and failure, Saïx became restless during the periods of time he was grounded. He walked aimlessly around the headquarters until he was given permission to leave. On certain days, when the darkness keeping him together made itself known, Saïx found himself walking down the long, long staircases to the subterranean floor where Kairi was kept in a cell, facing a white wall.

Some would say that it was the darkness speaking through him on the occasions he went down there. No decent person in their right mind would tell a frightened young girl that her best friend might die because of her. Unfortunately for Kairi, and any other person with the misfortune of crossing paths with Saïx, there was nothing decent about him.

"You are the fire that feeds Sora's anger," he'd say and watch despair contort her innocent face as she gripped the iron bars between her and freedom. "That anger will consume him while he tries to save you, and when he realizes that he can't, he will become exactly like _us_."

Kairi would shake her head and say something about how Sora was strong, and that he'd never let that happen. She tried to sound certain. Sora was a rock. Isa had been a rock too, but he had eroded in the water and had become grains of sand in an underwater desert. The same would happen to Sora with the exception that he would have to stay in darkness forever. There were very few things as entertaining as convincing Kairi of it in every opportunity that presented itself.

The reason for Saïx's visit today was different.

Four Dusks had nearly fallen over themselves to tell Saïx that Axel had been sighted in Oblivion, and that rumors had it that he wanted to take Kairi back.

Saïx was convinced that Axel wanted Kairi to turn Sora back to a Nobody. Axel wanted Roxas back. He was shortsighted and failed to see what good things could come out of having Kairi under lock and key while Sora tried to find a way into this colorless world.

It was Saïx's task to make Axel see what foolish mistakes he had been committing, starting with leaving the Organization. Saïx had been taught how to make others realize their mistakes. He just had to leave it to the rain and hope that Xaldin was available for when the time came for healing. It was a foolproof and effective method he wanted to use. Once that was out of the way, Axel would be cooperative again.

Saïx could hear Axel and Kairi talk the closer he got to the other end of the portal of darkness. Kairi seemed at least smart enough to not trust Axel.

"What are you doing? Are you with them?"

"No, Kairi, listen. I used to be. I'm not anymore. I made a mistake, okay? It's my fault you're stuck here, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to come to this. Let me get you out of here and back to Sora."

"Can I trust you?"

Axel sighed. "Look around. Whether I can be trusted or not, doesn't matter. You'll at least have a chance to run away if you come with me. Let me save you, Kairi."

It was strange how the darkness worked. Sometimes it felt as natural as the blood running through his veins, other times the darkness would freeze and break into large and sharp shards, puncturing the flesh around it to make room for the liquid darkness underneath it. On very rare occasions, the shards would turn hard as diamond with the pressure that existed in Saïx's chest, and it felt as if the shards not only cut through flesh but bones as well. It was only painful for as long as he managed to keep the pressure inside.

Once the pressure broke through his self-control and made it feel as if the searing rage within him tore his skin to shreds, he lost all notion of what pain was.

He was on the edge when he stepped out of the portal of darkness. Axel froze, one chakram in his hand, ready to throw it against the iron bars to free Kairi from the prison. Saïx was faintly aware of Kairi standing in a corner, taking cover from the chakram in case it broke through. Seemed like Axel's lies were easy to believe.

"What empty promises did you have her believe, Axel?"

"No promises I won't keep."

"Traitor."

Saïx's claymore materialized in his tight grip. Axel took a cautious step back, his chakrams catching fire. He was still as frightened as he had been in Hollow Bastion. He looked back at Saïx with fear in his eyes, and yet he was still determined to fight if that's what it was going to take to free Kairi.

"That means nothing coming from you."

"Axel!" Kairi was going to run up to the bars, but stopped in her tracks when Axel glanced at her quickly.

"Step back, Kairi. This won't be long." He smiled a smile that reached his eyes. "I'll get you out of here."

There wasn't any time for thoughts as the pressure ripped through Saïx. It gave him a split second to decide whether he would prefer to writhe in pain until he died or to channel the pain onto someone else. He was in an endless state of wanting to see and hear someone else hurt. He needed the confirmation that pain wasn't only reserved for him, and the red blur he could see through the haze was the one thing he wanted to hurt.

Axel jumped and dodged from Saïx, throwing the chakrams at Saïx when he held the claymore over his head. He watched the spikes cut through the fabric of the coat and leave red trails on Saïx's skin. But it didn't slow Saïx down. Not in the same way Axel was slowed down when he took a hit to his sides. Kairi screamed when Axel fell to the floor and just barely managed to move away from the claymore that crashed through the stone floor in a demonstration of its destructive power.

Axel thought that he was being smart when he used a portal of darkness to teleport himself to the other side of the room. Kairi thought that Axel had bought himself some time and even managed a deep breath through a sob as she watched Axel appear through the thorny mist. They both failed to realize that the darkness Axel used to get away with also flowed in Saïx's veins. It showed Saïx where Axel would appear as soon as Axel made the decision to use the darkness in his favor.

Kairi's scream caught in her throat when Saïx pushed the claymore right through Axel's chest. Axel fell forward slightly with a pained groan, unsure of what had happened until he looked down and saw the damage that was the tiebreaker.

The pressure returned into the hollowness in Saïx's ribcage as if it was repelled by Axel's blood that spilled down the claymore and onto Saïx's gloves.

Axel pushed Saïx away before he fell further in, and managed to stumble away from the claymore with his arms around himself. He turned to Kairi quickly and smiled at her sadly as he disappeared into a portal of darkness.

"Axel!" Kairi shook the bars she was holding onto. "Axel!" She turned to look at Saïx. She sobbed and clenched her hands around the iron bars so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "You're a monster."

Saïx looked back at her. He had no intention of arguing against her statement. There wasn't a trace of anger left on his face. He seemed unmoved by the mess after the battle and by how it had ended.

And he was.

All of this wasn't happening because of him. It was a consequence of a time when there had been no one around him with the decency to put an end to him before he turned into a grotesque monster with a growing urge to harm others.

"I need a new pair of gloves."

He ignored Kairi's screams after him. He disappeared into a portal of darkness with the memory of Axel's pained expression fresh in his mind. Saïx knew what that pain felt like, and knowing that Axel was going through the same at this very instant, rejected by both those of light and darkness, was enough to put a wicked smile on his face.

**~o~**

The deaths of most of their colleagues had come as surprises. Most thought that they were better and stronger than Sora and his companions, but the trend showed that they weren't. They were few in number, and the priority was now to complete the Moon as fast as possible before Sora and his friends intervened.

It was going to be difficult.

Despite Xemnas's efforts to shield their world from strangers, Sora had found a loophole and was now roaming the city in search of their headquarters.

Axel had proven to be a traitor in more ways than one. There had been thousands of Dusks, eagerly hoping to bring an unconscious Sora to the headquarters when they had neared the shield. They could have turned Sora into a Nobody in his attempt to end them all. The Dusks could have served Axel's purpose, but Axel had joined the fight against the Dusks, despite his injuries.

He had given his life to protect Sora and to open up a way for them to get to the colorless world.

The Dusks that had survived, had hurried back to Oblivion to tell them everything in vivid detail. Xigbar had looked at Saïx for a reaction, barely able to contain his amusement at thinking of what it would look like, but Saïx's reaction had been minimal. Axel was dead because of his weakness. That was all that could be said about it.

In a way, Saïx had hoped that Axel's death would ease the pressure in his chest, but instead it seemed that he had a list of people he wanted to bring to an end before the pressure could vanish.

He hadn't thought that the next person on the list would be Sora.

Sora was, after all, the reason they would be able to complete the Moon, and Saïx had thought that Sora's curse would be enough of a punishment, but he wanted Sora dead, not hurt or writhing in pain, dead like Axel was; Saïx wanted Sora eliminated _because _Axel was dead. Axel had died for Sora, beside him, unwilling to live in a world where they belonged on different sides, maybe hopeful for a rebirth where they'd be able to be what they couldn't be here, and Saïx's brief realization that Isa hadn't meant a fraction of that, almost had him break the charade before he was granted permission.

He quickly drenched those thoughts in the water that wanted to drown him, and he took a deep breath.

It had been enough to shake his concentration. It showed in everything else that he tried to do once the the enemies broke into the headquarters. He failed to get Kairi to follow him, despite promising her that he'd take her to Sora, and as the Moon's last pieces were coming together, yet another opposing power made it into the building.

Their grand plan was a house made out of cards, standing outside in a furious storm.

It was coming undone.

But all Saïx could think about was how he was going to be Sora's demise. Sora's and Roxas's.

He stood waiting in a room with a spectacular view of the Moon. It had been long since he had last seen her. The memories of her were faint in his mind, but strong enough for him to feel safe in her presence. There was no power greater than that of the Moon. Her strength radiated through the windows. It fortified his permission to end the charade that had kept him in check.

After this last battle, everything would come into place. At least for him. The Moon would grant him a heart and erase the memories he had of Hell to begin anew. It's what he had been promised.

Saïx heard Sora and his multitude of friends long before they entered the room. He turned around to face them and saw that Kairi had managed to find what she had been looking for. In a way, it was a shame that her happiness of reuniting with Sora would be short-lived.

"Only you could have made it this far in one piece, Roxas…"

"That's really getting old!" Sora stomped his foot like the child he was and glared at Saïx. His two peculiar friends weren't late in stepping in to defend him. They all looked at him with contempt, and Saïx knew that to them he was something that needed to be eradicated to make everything right with the universe. The feeling was mutual.

Saïx's claymore had already materialized in his hand. The head of it had transformed into a circle of lethal thorns. He was, after all, not out to just wound Sora. Saïx created a strong draft with a swing of his claymore and lifted a barrier as soon as Kairi and her protector were outside of what Saïx wanted to turn into a battlefield.

Saïx unleashed walls of energy around him that left cracks in the floor. It gave him room to move around and he claimed large parts of the battlefield, pushing Sora and his two friends into corners when they tried to avoid getting caught in the violent energy surges.

Sora hurried back from his spot in safety when it seemed that one of his friends would get caught in Saïx's rage. A shield flew across the room as Saïx tossed the vermin up in the air, ready to end its pitiful life when Sora jumped up and barely managed to block the hit of the claymore.

Sora didn't stay to get stuck in a reverse tug of war. He used Saïx's force to dodge to the side and catch Saïx in a fury of hits.

The darkness within Saïx responded to each hit by short-circuiting and confusing commands. A large claymore appeared beside him. It wasn't his. It belonged to one of his Nobodies. For a split second he was allowed to feel fear. Sora hurried up to the claymore and picked it up without much effort. He slid across the room, holding onto the lethal weapon and set course for Saïx.

Saïx tried to unleash another wall of energy for defense, but the claymore tore through it as if it hadn't been there at all.

He managed to block one of the many hits with his own claymore. An electric shock shot through him and paralyzed him long enough for the circulating darkness to snap out of its confusion. Sora's claymore disappeared. Sora quickly summoned his Keyblade while his two friends covered him; one with a shield, the second with magic.

Saïx went after them with his claymore, rage keeping him upright. It didn't seem to matter how many times he attacked or injured them, someone would always heal them with a spell that didn't seem to hurt as much as Saïx remembered it to.

It didn't occur to him to summon more Nobodies, not until he was caught in a second rain of violent hits coming from a heavy claymore. He tried to summon them with a snap of his fingers, but his gloves were soaked and his fingers slipped against each other without a sound.

Saïx didn't stop to question the sudden halt of the seemingly never-ending attacks. He could barely distinguish his enemies where they stood. Saïx stumbled forward slightly, for the first time feeling the weight of the claymore in his hand. He let it slip out of his grip.

This wasn't a victory.

How could he have lost against someone like _Roxas_? Saïx was stronger now than he had been then. He had the Moon's support. His victory had already been written as truth, how else would the Moon know that it was time for her to keep her end of the bargain?

This had to be a mistake.

Saïx turned his back to Sora. He moved forward slightly with every move causing sharp pain to fire through his nerves. He was disappearing. There was no sign of a gentle and steady thump in his chest. The pain was worse than ever. The darkness was stirring into a chaotic storm that made it seem as if all of him was turning into black dust.

_You promised. _

Saïx reached his hand upward where the Moon was shining brightly in the otherwise dark and empty sky.

_There was never a moon to call yours, Isa. You are the world. A lonely world in a vast empty space. You had to create something to illuminate your dark night sky._

"Why…" Saïx gasped. "...where is my heart?"

The black dust swirled around his feet and rose to seemingly devour him, but the raging storm inside him was simply breaking through the last of his layers to completely turn him into darkness. He reached his hand out higher, as if asking the Moon for help when the raging storm pulled him under the surface and filled his lungs with dust, but the Moon simply watched as he vanished into oblivion.


	13. Always Follow The Bubbles

It was the water burning in his bruised lungs that woke him. Isa barely managed to sit up in the waist-deep water. He tried to keep himself from coughing, but he couldn't, not until he had gotten most of the water out. Each breath came in shallow gasps. He was shivering, but his instinct of running his arms around himself to keep warm was overpowered by the fear of showing weakness. A dry fever made his limbs heavy, and he looked down on himself to see that he was wearing a hospital gown with spots.

It was a clash between past and present. He hadn't seen this hospital gown in years, but it looked exactly like he thought he remembered it. Torn, bloodied and worn. It wasn't as big on him now as it once had been.

There was debris everywhere he looked. The buildings were crumbling and falling into the water with large splashes. Every now and then a piece of the sky fell off its place and came crashing down, catching fire along the way and lightening the sky and the clouds in an ominous red.

"Well, what do ya know?" Xigbar said with a laugh from where he sat on the hood of a car, towering over Isa. "Good thing I don't listen to the old man." He reached down and pulled Isa up violently by getting a firm grip of his hair. "He said that you were too far gone to have survived the transition, but I know you, Chuckles. You're as stubborn as a mule."

Isa winced slightly when Xigbar gripped his hair tighter where he had an open wound. He knew that he was badly injured. He could taste the blood in his mouth, and he could distinguish it from the water when it ran down his face. Isa tried a spell, but there was nothing to draw magic from, and he just ended up feeling hollow.

"What are you doing, Chuckles? Huh? Why don't you just give up? You would've saved yourself a lot of grief if you had just given up when I told you to, and look at you now. You gotta learn to admit defeat, Chuckles."

"...where is...Lea?"

"Lea?" Xigbar laughed. "You're like a one track mind. Is that what this is about? Are you trying to go back? Trying to turn me into some weird animal, Chuckles? Is it easier for you to believe what I say if everything else is different? You can't go back, even if you try. There's not enough light in you. You're all tapped out. Which brings me to why I'm here. Give me the sphere. Don't waste your time saying that you don't know what I'm talking about. Give me the sphere, and I promise that this'll end."

Two large pieces of sky crashed around them, but Xigbar didn't care. He stared at Isa with his one good eye, giving Isa's head a quick shake when the silence stretched for too long.

"C'mon now, Chuckles. You're tired, aren't you? It's alright to be tired. You fought long and hard. I'm impressed. I bet the old man is impressed too. But what do you have left to fight for, huh? Don't faint on me yet, Chuckles. Answer the question. What else can you fight for? You don't have a home to go back to, not unless you want to be burnt at the stake for that mark you have on your face. Everyone will know what you're responsible for. Can you imagine their rage? You know what rage does to people. You almost killed Lea. Bet you would've finished him off if you had been given the time, wouldn't you?"

Xigbar paused when he it seemed that Isa was about to faint again.

"You don't have anyone waiting for you either. _No one_ is waiting for you if you were to survive this, Chuckles. Axel preferred to burn alive than to stick around for you. What does that tell you?"

"...shut up," Isa breathed and closed his eyes briefly only to be quickly shaken out of it by Xigbar.

"Look around. There's no one here but you. No one's coming for you, Chuckles. You're gonna die whether you like it or not, I'm just offering you a less painful way out. All it costs ya, is the damned sphere."

Xigbar said it as if Isa didn't know, as if he could still be hurt by something he had known for years; he was alone. It had just taken some time to accept it; taken time and mistakes that had all led him here where he could finally embrace the truth that had been with him all along.

"I'll give you the sphere." Isa coughed. His legs folded underneath him with the effort, but he was kept upright with Xigbar's help. Xigbar frowned with disgust and turned away from Isa to not have any blood splatter on him.

"Seems like Sora fights with pent up anger, just like you, Chuckles." Xigbar tried to laugh, but his face contorted at having to watch Isa cough until his lips started to shift blue.

"One condition," Isa managed to say finally. He wiped the side of his mouth with the back of his hand and let the water around him wash it clean when he dropped his hand to his side.

"You missed a spot." Xigbar pointed at his own chin in hopes that Isa would take care of the rest.

"You'll, leave Lea alone. For as long as he lives."

"He died, Chuckles. What, you still got ringing in your ears? He killed himself."

Isa shook his head slowly, but stopped as soon as his back protested. "He's immortal."

"Did he promise you that?"

The tears stung in Isa's eyes. They accumulated as quickly as the buildings were coming apart and fell almost as fast as the pieces of the sky above them. Isa wanted to hold them back, but he lacked the strength. Despite it all, there were still things that could hurt him, and if anyone could dig those things up, it was Xigbar. It was a skill that he had perfected through the years and turned into a habit. The greater tragedy was that Xigbar was the only person who knew about the things that had gotten Isa's hopes up, the amount of times he had died, Xigbar knew about the one person he had cared about, and all the ways in which Isa had been broken.

"If you want the sphere, you have to promise to leave him be."

"Alright." Xigbar sneered. "I promise that we'll let Lea be for as long as he lives. Give me the sphere."

Xigbar looked down when he saw Isa raise his right hand and reach his pinky finger forward. The tips of Isa's fingers were shifting light purple with the cold, but that was clearly not why Isa was holding his hand up. He held his pinky finger out more decisively until Xigbar laughed.

"You live and you learn, huh?" Xigbar sealed the promise by grabbing Isa's pinky finger with his own and giving it a quick shake. "The sphere now, Chuckles. I'm not playing around."

Isa dug his hand into the only shallow pocket on his hospital gown. He knew that he wouldn't find the sphere there, and he hadn't expected the comforting weight of his dagger. Isa gripped it tightly with a small gulp. He didn't really want to do this, but at the same time it was the second thing he wanted to do the most.

He stabbed Xigbar in the leg in a swift move.

Xigbar quickly let go of the tight grip he had on Isa's hair to put his hands around the hilt of the dagger that Isa had buried all the way into the bone.

"For fuck's sake!" he roared as he struggled with the decision whether to pull the dagger out now or not.

Isa stumbled on through the water, carefully moving debris out of his way with his arms and hands. He could only hope that there weren't any debris underneath the dark surface. He could barely keep himself on his feet as it was, and he doubted that Xigbar would help him up if he fell.

Oblivion was one of the very few buildings that had yet to start crumbling into the water, but it was clear that it wouldn't survive the flood. The water levels were rising. Isa had to hurry through the lobby to get to the staircase before the lights gave out in loud short-circuits.

He knew that Xigbar was right in everything he had said. Isa was going to die either way. There was no escaping this. His world had been reduced to an island about to be swallowed by a stormy sea that had been crashing up against his barriers for a long time. Isa knew that he should have taken Xigbar's offer and just given up, but he still had one thing he wanted to do before he vanished.

With his insistent instinct of moving forward, Isa managed to get to the top floor. It was difficult to support himself against the blank surfaces. He stumbled forward, leaving a trail of red smudges down the corridor and all the way to the room of mirrors.

The doorway dissolved as soon as he stepped through it. The table and chairs in the room melted into the mirrors. Isa walked ahead slowly. The mirrors cracked underneath his feet and over his head, creating broken dimensions in their endless reflections.

As the room disappeared behind him, he built an extension ahead, separated from the room of mirrors by glass doors. He built a small balcony with a ledge wide enough to sit on and narrow enough to have his legs dangle off the edge. The view was spectacular. He could see it from where he stood before he pulled the glass doors aside and stepped out on the small balcony. The sky was on fire, as if the sun was about to set. The tall buildings were scarce, and the ones that were still crumbling into the water, created magnificent splashes.

Isa climbed onto the ledge carefully and sat down with a heavy sigh. It didn't matter how much he focused, he couldn't get himself to stop shaking. Isa closed his eyes and clenched his fingers around the edge. He wanted to feel the texture of the stone, the dents left by harsh winds, the imperfections, but the details he longed for, only made him bleed faster.

"Here."

Isa looked to his side at the sound of Axel's voice. He held out a blue block of ice cream on a stick and took a bite off his own with his eyes focused forward. Isa tilted his head slightly to see the purple tear under the one eye he could catch a glimpse of from where he sat. Axel's face was unknown to Isa, unexplored territory in comparison to what Isa was certain he knew about Lea's face. How did Axel look when he leisurely enjoyed an ice cream in these heights? Did his smile reach his eyes? Did any of this remind him of a past that was nothing but blurry snapshots to Isa?

Isa took the ice cream with both hands to not drop it. He looked at it carefully to see if there were errors in his projection of what he thought a sea-salt ice cream looked like. He knew he had had plenty of these before, in another life, eternities ago. The memories were too far gone to know what they had been like.

He put the ice cream to his lips, knowing that it should be cold. He put it in his mouth, against his tongue, knowing that it should taste of salt and sugar, but maybe this was another brand that he hadn't had before. It was meant to taste like copper. The ice cream, like everything else blue in his world, was meant to be tainted with red and shift purple.

"I wish I knew how to talk to you…" Isa sighed softly and watched his sea-salt ice cream dissolve into nothing. What did people talk about? Isa's mind was blank, but he was determined to have a conversation that weren't orders or arguments. He had heard that people could talk for hours on end about everything and anything, he just had to find one topic.

Isa shuddered at feeling something trickle down his leg. He closed his eyes and rummaged through his nearly empty mind until he found something.

"There's a pancake house around the corner that I go to...it opened recently. They serve pancakes with maple syrup and melted butter. It smells so good that it could wake the dead. Have you gone there?"

"No."

"They have trees that blossom into warm loaves of bread right outside."

The building in front of them collapsed when a large shard of sky crashed against it and pulled it under water. The torrents created by the impact, swallowed the ruins of nearby buildings and made the whole world flicker to white for a second, revealing a room of thrones.

"You think that you'd be happy to know that I remembered you until the end?"

Axel didn't answer. He sighed and took another bite off his ice cream. A small part of Isa was almost sure that Lea would smile at the thought, Axel would rather not know.

A fireball swept through the sky, shattering it like fragile glass in its wake. Isa looked ahead to see the white room with thrones fully revealed as heaven rained down. He got up onto shaky legs to get a better view and had to struggle with his balance when the water at the bottom shook the foundation of the building.

"_You're not supposed to be here!"_

"_Promises to keep."_

Isa gasped and stepped closer to the edge. _There you are_, Isa thought. He could see Lea standing on a throne across the room. He was holding onto someone with one hand, and ready to fight with his chakram in the other. Isa inhaled slowly to feel the scent of autumn travel the distance between them. It was a faint scent, but it was the only real thing Isa could sense other than the biting cold.

"_I'll always be there to bring my friends back."_

"Lea…" Isa's voice was weak and barely audible in the destruction, but he called for Lea anyway; out of habit, and because he liked the way Lea's name filled his mouth with the taste of distant memory of a star-filled sky.

"He's not here for you."

"I know."

Isa dug into his only pocket and curved his fingers around the sphere that had been there all along. He took it out to give it one last look. After all these years it was still the same. Metallic and luminescent in color with a slow current of stars swirling around in there, protected by a weak barrier that was the only thing keeping the last of Isa together.

It was alright to let go now.

Lea had made it out. He was strong enough on his own, and on the days he wasn't, there'd be good people around to help him; friends that he had chosen on his own.

Isa tossed the sphere to Axel, unafraid of the height beneath him as he looked down at the dark water quickly engulfing what was left of his world.

"Tell me what I have to do," Isa said with a soft sigh to hide the tremble in his voice.

The sphere melted in Axel's grip and fell the long distance into the water. Isa's grid flickered. The few strings of light that were left, went out and crumbled into ashes that were blown away with the wind.

"When you hit the water, don't struggle to hold your breath."

"Okay. I won't."

It was all he got to say. The building shook as a large wave crashed against it. It seemed like the impact had an effect on the outside world too. The thrones were turned upside down as Isa fell off the ledge. Shadows emerged from the water and flew up to cling around Isa. He wasn't falling fast enough.

The hit against the water was marked by the sound of metal hitting metal and it set off the siren. A faint red light came to life at the top of Oblivion. The Heart Station awoke to sound the alarm; the last Guardian was dying. Don't struggle to hold your breath, Axel had said, and Isa almost felt the urge to laugh at how easily the air was beaten out of him. The Shadows pulled him further down. The bubbles broke free from him and swam up toward the increasingly distant surface.

Always follow the bubbles, or you'll drown in the vast and unforgiving ocean.

Strings of darkness reached for him from the bottom of the ocean. They wrapped around him in layers as he stared up to where he could see the distorted sky that had been replaced with the room of thrones. Lea was looking down at him, his eyes wide with disbelief as his mouth formed around Isa's name. The currents swayed Isa back and forth gently. Lea's face became blurred in the layers of cold water, and as the last bubble escaped Isa, he wondered if Lea would remember him until the end too.


End file.
